Another Puzzle Piece

I stood there, having punched the brick wall six to seven times before I broke down and walked away from the woman. I walked out of the parking lot and made a beeline for the huge lake seeing that the moon shined brightly on it, almost like it was calling for me. I stood in front of the lake, wondering if I could just reset my life. I called out to my mother from beyond, looking for her in the water, tears hitting my feet as I walked towards the lake and hoping she would appear and just take me with her. I had no sense, just feelings. There was no direction, only confusion.

I had seen my mother in the eyes of a deer during a full moon only months before, I knew she was out there somewhere, and I had a deep desire to just be with her, to reset my life no matter the cost; only I had no idea what that cost was, anything had to have been better than the inferno I was living. The woman stood behind me about 15 feet away; she sounded devastated; she sounded like she wanted to save me, but her voice moved further and further away, and I got closer and closer to the water.

The lights to the cop car following us from the hotel parking lot came on and it brought me back to a reality I was desperately trying to escape. I walked back up the hill towards the woman. She was speaking to the female cop, saying how I was trying to take my life. I wasn’t, but there was some truth to what she was saying. I just wanted to escape. When asked, I explained I had just lost my mother to Alzheimer’s, and I was having a breakdown. What I didn’t mention was that my breakdown had much more to do with the woman, than it did with losing my mother.

At the time, I had no idea why I kept trying to lose myself in bodies of water, walking into oceans like I had a destination out in the depths of darkness. I had only succumbed to the birth of these emotions when around this woman; but I was blinded, blinded by trauma, by codependency, by addiction to love, by pure fear of the unknown. The officers kindly sympathized with me, despite the push of this woman to blame the whole situation on me; after all, I was the one risking my life, and yet they allowed me to walk away with the only encouraging words I had heard in months, and a Clifford doll gifted to me by the female officer. You may say this was a suicide attempt; you may say this was a mental breakdown; but nothing in this story will be as it seems.