Speech – Let Me Tell You a Story

Trigger Warning: This speech contains material of suicide and depression. I invite anyone to leave if you feel uncomfortable with this topic.

I was standing near the ocean, the salty water raging against the rock pools and sand, when I saw the whale. It was lying on the beach with washed up driftwood piled around its body, but it did not look like a normal whale. The white bone with its heart displayed through thick ribs, its eye was black iris and no pupil. Howling its sad, heavy song, it vibrated and sent shivers down my spine, adding weight to my shoulders and pulling tears from my eyes. I know that my heart had slowed and died on the operation table, but now looking into the cave that was once an eye of a whale, I could feel it beat in my chest. I could almost feel its sad emptiness, gained from the long lonely life it had lived. The whale must have forgotten what the voice of another sounded like, so far away from…everything.

But now it wasn’t a whale, right in front of my eyes the chimera had shrunk, still towering over me but not to the scale of the whale. What was now standing in front of me was a monster, a great and hairy creature who struck fear into my heart. Was it going to eat me? I thought. Will it harm me and leave me for dead? Never had it crossed my mind that it was a peaceful being. I watched it watch me, then turn and walk across the beach, footprints barely traceable through its shuffling gait. From my place by the tree line, I stood in fear of what it could do to me, but it walked past the sand and through the grass with no such intent, and so I watched it wander and disappear into the trees a little to my right. 

I can’t remember when I closed my eyes to calm my heartbeat, but when I opened them again I found a giant cat sitting in front of me. But I wasn’t frightened by the cat, it was a fluffy tortoiseshell and had startling blue eyes that kept me rooted to the spot. After what felt like an eternity of staring, it turned from me, walking into the trees in the direction the beast had gone, I couldn’t hear it. It was hungry, I could tell that much, searching for something to fulfil its hunger. So I followed it, watched it hunt for whatever it was hunting for. A stick snapped and echoed through the trees, the cats head whipped around so fast I was surprised it hadn’t howled in pain. The giant cat had found what it was looking for and stalked forward slowly, I couldn’t hear a sound. Too late did I realise what was happening. It pounced. 

“NO!” I screamed, but it didn’t help, the soft animal that was the fluffy tortoiseshell cat was gone and the sleek, black furred monster that I now saw snarled and scratched and teared, until the beautiful deer was a deer no longer. So this is death, I thought, I have never seen it like this before, the whale had been dead but I had not seen it die, for death and being dead are two very different things. 

The scenery changed and twisted to form a rocky plateau, tall trees and green grass was nowhere to be found, and the cat and the deer were gone. The scorching hot sun blinding me from seeing anything else but red rock, but I could hear birds chirping and a river giggling at me, the sun was in my way. I couldn’t see anything, and my eyes stung from trying to see through the blinding light, I wanted to watch the birds, and dip my feet into the river, but the red hot light wasn’t letting me. “LET ME OUT!”

Then it was dark, as if someone had flipped the light switch, I felt relieved, until I realised that I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch black, and I couldn’t hear anything, what was this? I don’t like it, I don’t like the silence, I don’t like the blackness. I don’t like the nothingness. I collapsed on what felt like the ground, feeling grass and not caring, I couldn’t see the grass anyway, and I sobbed. The salty tears that trailed down my cheek didn’t have time to dry before the grass shrank beneath my fingers and waves crashed in front of me, fire light blooming from the trees behind me where the cat had killed the deer. I was once again standing on the beach with the whale skeleton in the night with the chilling wind in my hair. It took me a long while to open my eyes and notice that the skeleton of the once blue whale had no eye, and had no being, and I was left alone.

Lightning flashed and the trees behind me were no longer tall, the beach had disappeared and the storm was gone, all I could see was pitch black. Then I looked up. The night sky filled my vision. The lights were dancing and twirling around me and I felt calm, serene, and my eyes closed once again. 

The first thing I see when I opened my eyes, is my white surroundings, the scratchy white sheets, the white walls and the white tiled floor. I can also see a woman, she sat in an armchair off to my left, and she was still asleep, like I had been. I looked down and saw the white badges around my wrists. Beside me the woman woke up and looked around, her eyes met mine and she jumped up to give me a gentle hug.

“How are you, darling?” she said it so softly, as if not to disrupt the dream.

“I’m good,” has my voice always been this scratchy? It felt like I had swallowed the desert.

My mother smiled and stroked my hair. “You almost died sweetheart, it’s okay if you’re not.” And I remembered the knife and the bathtub and the blood. Something like fear shot down my spine, setting my body into a state of cold shock. My mothers hand gripped mine and I remembered, I’m not dead, I haven’t died, I’m alive.