Rage like the Sea

People describe rage as red. As burning fire and scorching skin. Shaking, burning, thrumming with a feeling all too familiar and yet all too damning.

But rage isn't red. It isn't the flames of fire or burning heat of the sun. It is suffocating. Depressing. Drowning. A sea of ever darkening blue that surrounds you, permeates you, and fills you until their is nothing but blackness and silence.

I do not shake with my anger, I crash with it. Waves upon waves that crash into my chest and threaten to break my ribs apart. At first they are quick, back to back, floundering as there is no space in between to breathe. This is when the rage is white. The froth and bubbles that seem to grow with each new feeling until I am blinded. The come so consistently and yet I never seem to be ready for them. Like the beating of my heart they thrum into my chest, thrum through my body, and are never ending; at least at first.

As the waves seem to begin to settle, those pauses in between are when I scream. The wind and the chaos whip the sound away and the waves crash into me again and again. I rage against the waves, punching, kicking, but each time they push me back. Back into silence and the anger thrumming through with each hit of the wave. I slip deeper into the anger and see nothing but water. Blue like the sky. Blue like the sea, and the wetness streaks across my face. I scream again but the white has become blue and all there is are tears and salt as I begin to drown in it.

I can no longer see the waves but get smashed by the current. The thrumming has turned into a contant pressure. Ever increasing and shifting and pushing me around, the anger my master. Each new slight, each new minute that the current pushes against me, adds to the bruises littering my spine. Every now and again the current pushes me into a rock, a stone, an anemone and the pain settles even deeper into my bones until they snap. The pain is excruciating, the rage suffocating, and all I can think to do is curl into a ball and sink deeper into the sea.

There is no air left to scream, no current to fight against, no rocks to pound me until I am brown and blue, so I settle into silence. Into my anger as there is nothing left to fight against, and no salvation to be seen as I watch the current drag me into open water and deeper into the sea. Away from life, away from anyone who can reach me, and away from the things making me angry. I see the chasm below me, where blue becomes black and the bottom of the sea seems welcoming in its final silence; my bones the food for creatures with long teeth and no eyes who won't remember me as I turn into nothing but sand. Turning towards the surface there is a depth to the blue, to the tears and the pounding of the current that thrums in my ears. I see no red, I feel no heat. Only the cold and the shivering pain of the reef. But a light peaks through and I realize I have a choice to make.

The grave of my rage; welcoming and final, or the life of my grief; difficult and ongoing.

And the longer I stare between the two, as I sink deeper into the sea, the harder it becomes to choose any color but darkening blue.