Cliff’s Edge
written by Sevyn Michaela-Rose Waters
Last weekend, I climbed into the ocean under a cloudless sky. The shock of cold water spread across my body in an instant, the sun barely warm enough to ease the tension. I followed the salt in the air, the gentle breeze whipping my hair into curls. I hadn’t felt peace in fourteen months, but on this day, I could breathe. I could release the pull of a man who couldn’t be what I needed. The water surrounded me, challenged me. Seafoam crackled and soothed the violence of the wave’s crash like a salve over a wound.
My friends waved from the flat, beige shore. They had watched me throughout the past year battle with neglect, abandonment, humiliation. They don’t understand why I stayed with him so long, but I do. Love isn’t synonymous with reason. Last spring, he and I sat on my patio, my dog at our feet. We shared a bottle of wine. We talked about a little white house on the coast and children playing in the garden. The sun was setting on a day well spent, the promise of a future sealed with its eventual rise. He brought into my life childlike wonder and a feeling of endless possibility. It was like being drunk without the heaviness.
I stayed because of this feeling. I stayed because I knew he wanted to be a better man. He wanted to stop drinking as much, he wanted to make better friends, he wanted to marry me one day, be the father of my children. I made the mistake of believing this. No, it wasn’t a mistake. It was grace, love, hope. All the things that make a woman mad. I am a woman who is unafraid of madness. I embrace the storm until it leaves me on a cliff’s edge, staring down into death. Death is not to be trifled with, though. It is not to be romanticized. If I had stayed, if I had waited any longer for him, I would have been laid out on the rocks at the bottom.
Love isn’t synonymous with reason. The ocean understands this. She pushes and pulls, gives life and takes it away. She moves with grace, with rage, with purpose. I knew it was only seventy degrees outside when I walked into the shallow end, that the water would be ten degrees colder. I also knew I was alone now, inhaling the disappointment and exhaling the loss. I experienced heartbreak so often in the past fourteen months by the man I loved, it made a home of my body. Anxiety, mistrust, dread, pain––it was my constant state of being. He was gone, but these things remained. He would never hurt me again, but the memories would. How many nights had I been without sleep? How many times was I on my knees, begging God to change him? How many times had I abandoned myself?
It is only a matter of time before a woman stands at the cliff’s edge and chooses. Death or herself. I chose. I ran. I dove into the ocean and let the waves crash into my body. I submerged myself in the water, let the current teach me how to breathe him out of my system. Push, pull. In, out. I cried. I waved to my friends on the beach. I rubbed the salt into my skin and looked up at the sun. I laughed. I knew I would be okay.
