Opening my eyes

I put my hand against the car window stained by the tears of the dark sky. Pressing my cheek to the glass, a wave of coolness washes over it. The car was winding up the twisted roads in the mountains of Kauai just minutes ago, unaware that its wheels would stall in dark mud the twisted tentacles of storm washed vines holding them tight. I stare out the window at the distorted images faded by the rain, all the landmarks made fuzzy by the dripping water. The outline of the Kaloko dam rises softly above the stream fifty feet away from my car- seemingly just a lip of water choosing not to fall down the canyon. Up above, the stream would be swelling into a river, making a gradual transformation.1

My head hurts as I strain to see. I open the car door and step out into the sheets of rain – pelting my back with all the ‘what ifs’. Kaila always loved the dam, the way it rose above the water yet was built into the stream. I spent many summer nights with her standing on the reservoir bank and watching the stars shine on us. I had come here because of her. 2

Neither of us had been out here in years. Now seventeen, swallowed in the nights of bonfires and dancing on the boardwalk, the dam had fallen out of our lives, as had the cliques of middle school. While Kaila and I couldn’t have been more different, we were the ‘you can’t have one without the other type of friends’ until we were 13. High school came and the rules changed. Kaila started slipping through the cracks not wanting to be noticed, while all I wanted was for someone besides her to see me.3

I can feel someone around as if, while eliminating my ability to see, the rain magnified some dormant sense within me. I reach out my fingers touching the empty air being torn apart by little jewels of water. I can sense the basics of what makes a human exists out here – a beating heart, confusion, a dim light of life pulsing in the atmosphere – my soul is drawn to this fire being doused in rain. 4

I walk forward past the car, the corner of a cereal box ripped off squeezed by my fist – milking more meaning out of the words than I’ve already pieced together ‘Raindrops pelt the ground forming puddles out of dirt – deep diving spots out of wading pools.’ Words that meant barely anything, symbols intertwined to create words that could have power but didn’t in this context. I walk forward towards the water until I can feel it lapping against my feet, peering through the dark hoping to see something. I stumble and my legs are swallowed in murky water. 5

I remember that in middle school after a storm, we would stand on the top of the earthen dam and look below and see the wading pools we learned to swim in. Despite their new size they looked like puddles. It was in those years diving off of logs in the lagoon farther downriver stopped being an adrenaline high and Kaila and I began to search for other places to prove ourselves. 6

We used to see her walking along the beach in a big sweatshirt as the waves erased her footsteps. I didn’t reach out for her then. I was afraid that if I tried to hold her up – she’d pull me down with her and we’d both drown. Denial was easier than admitting that I might be able to tread water for a while if she was by my side.7

I jumped head first into the world of make up and popularity and didn’t notice that I was struggling to breathe until a group of us got arrested eight months ago, thus ending my status as the responsible daughter trusted to make good choices. Sent to a California boarding school at seventeen years old, I started over in a place so different from the one I had grown up in. For the first time in my life, struggling to swim in a place I did not fit and back as of yesterday, I now understand how Kaila had been suffocating. 8

Goosebumps race down my neck and spine – little dots of raised flesh reacting to the water. The water surface ripples in the distance before the dam as stick like arms brush it aside. Kaila materializes out of the dark water, her grey sweatshirt hanging on her hips as she pulls herself out to sit on the dam. I slosh my way to the shore and start walking along the bank I push through air and force my soaked jeans to let me move as close to it as I can get before I have to I enter the water to reach it. 9

“Aryana, go back to your car and pretend you just don’t see me. You’re good at that – not seeing people” her voice echoes across the water but still smothered by the wind and rain. She stands up on the edge of dam, her arms at her side, not even trying to balance, as she pivots towards me, her back to the water swirling beneath her. I start to run awkwardly through the rain closer towards the dam – the mud in Kauai makes the edge of the dam treacherous and slippery. Behind me I see imprints of my Nike tennis shoes in the mud – telltale signs of my being here which the rain will remold back into the red mud. I talk as I move forward. 10

“And somehow it was me you wanted to find you? Did you want me see through your eyes? Did you want me to be too late and know that it would hurt when they won’t find your body? Kaila, you do want me to see you or you wouldn’t have left a note on my windowsill – on a two-story building. I just don’t know why.” 11

My heart catches in my throat as I watch her foot slip sending water from the reservoir splashing over. I didn’t need to see her face to picture the smile dancing through her lips and eyes at the thrill as she stands on top of the world. 12

“I don’t know if I needed you to be here so I could say goodbye or if I wanted you here to witness. I don’t know what I was thinking – I don’t even think I was.” Her voice breaks through my reverie – as my mind searched through old memories. 13

The grey sweatshirt pulls her off balance with its wet weight as she starts to walk along the edge of the dam. She tilts as if she is walking a tight rope except few tight ropes are over a hundred feet above ground and above a rushing torrent of raindrops filling a riverbed. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, moving forward to the middle of the dam and faces me. 14

I stumble on the slippery mud. I kneel exasperated and in one quick moment I loosen my shoe laces and step out of my shoes – the mud can keep them, they aren’t worth much anyway just a part of the footprint that will fade away as I move forward and grow up. I walk straight towards Kaila through the murky water.15

As I reach the middle of the spillway, I dog paddle as I find my bearings. Ignoring Kaila’s snicker as she looks down at my clumsy attempts to swim, I just sigh. She’s an amazing swimmer because she surfs. Holding my breath I swim towards the sound of her laughing at me, my arms pushing away depths of the river. Treading water at the edge of the dam, I place my fingers on the edge to hold me to something. I look up at Kaila, whose face is full of questions and surprise. I do a double take, because her eyes seem to flicker, not with trust, but with respect. 16

“Truth or dare … one last time.” though I didn’t know why she will answer me since I had abandoned her. 17

“Truth,” she whispers, measuring the look in my eyes. I don’t try to pull myself up onto the dam, instead I just float in the water and let my voice carry through the air.18

“How do I stop you?”19

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~20

Kaila’s Story21

Aryana’s words take me by surprise and I blink away my thoughts hiding behind my eyes. I don’t have to tell her anything – it would be so easy to lie. Its not as though she had acknowledged my existence over the past couple of years – I can tune her out right now – or I can put the bleeding of my soul into words. The words tumble out of my mouth as my tongue tries to place them. The emotional words dance across the stormy air – touching on the surface of the murky water and touching the tears from the sky.22

“It hurts so bad – I just want to end it. I’m sick of sitting on my window and hearing the laughter echoing from the beach at ten o clock. I’m sick of drowning in grief knowing that all of you moved on but I wasn’t good enough or it wasn’t meant to be for me. I don’t want to see you laughing, pretending to be someone else with the fake bitches that we threw sand at as little kids. I don’t want to miss you or what we had. I just want it to be over – I don’t need to be missed – I just don’t want to feel my heart shudder and break and chip off even more. You all are done with me – I just want life to be done with me too so I can be over.” 23

The rain chases the tears down my cheeks, as both races to stain my chin. I cough, hiding the soreness in my throat threatening to escape the way the words did. My stringy hair lies against my neck and I shiver with the cold memories. 24

“I can’t swim without you,” her words hit my ears. I forced my face to be still, even as distraught as I was, I felt something break inside of me. Not in the way your heart cracks when you walk past your best friend and you realize you don’t know her anymore – but in the way the barriers you put up to protect yourself just fall away because you don’t need them anymore. 25

Suddenly thunder drums against the sky following a lightening bolt neither of us had seen. I hear a cracking sound and feel my balance shift. I bend down and grab Aryana’s hand as a powerful bolt of lightening breaks open the clouds and illuminates the purple sky. I see her face and see the shock written across it in italic letters. “Hold your breath and hold on to me!” I whisper fiercely in her ear. I feel her nod against my cheek and we hug each other holding on to the only other solid being. She closes her eyes to brace herself but I leave mine open. I wanted to feel it, be it, see it, smell it, and taste it even as my terror created goose bumps. 26

The dam breaks in one solid movement and the earth and water disappear beneath our feet. We are swept forward into free fall. We feel the crush of the water as we are falling. My heart flies up into my throat just as it does after I lose my surfboard and am floating on air, right before I sink. I open my mouth to breathe or speak my last words, but water rushes down my throat.27

Our bodies, our fingers still entwined somehow, tumble in the newborn torrent of elements. The breath is wrung from our lungs and the beat from our hearts. I can’t breathe but it doesn’t hurt yet – it will. My body slams into the floor cushioned somehow by the current and the water. I push upward against the sharp rocks stabbing my skin. I aim for the surface but the element emptying into the canyon from the reservoir, twists the force in my push and spins us. 28

Somehow my head breaks above the water, and I gulp in a breath – I think Aryana does too but things are moving too fast. Easily as if giant fingers were yanking us down again, we disappear in the path of the fallen rain from past storms. We are pulled along. Our heads break the surface occasionally. My leg feels every tree branch wrapping around it with a piercing pain. 29

The water swirls around us. It tugs us around the bends of the swollen river. The river’s angry wails crescendo until they are louder than the crashing thunder.30

My head is pounding from lack of oxygen. I gulp in muddy water as my mouth instinctively tries to breathe, the silt clogs my throat and I cough but my head is underwater so no one hears me. My cough only lets in more water but the current pushes us to the top of torrent briefly and I gasp for air, choking on the water in my throat. Aryana’s eyes are a faded brown, ashen and seemingly devoid of life. 31

On the news, I once saw some interview of a woman who was washed out to sea and wasn’t rescued for days. She had looked like she’d have given anything to have been unconscious while she was trapped – there was something in her eyes that was just beyond human.32

It had reminded me of a girl who was at school for six months; she’d transferred from L.A. She was my partner for history because no one else would be a partner with me. She wore long sleeves and jeans even in the summer months wouldn’t look at anyone. I caught her eye though and her eyes were the color of such unbearable pain that it was as if tears had tried to fade them out of existence.33

She left at the end of the semester, I asked her before she left why her eyes were so somber. For some reason she confided in me that she had been raped. She was so broken inside that the pain had corroded the colors of her eyes. Whoever raped her had stolen more than her spirit – he had stolen her will to live. All those memories were kicking and screaming in her head because she wasn’t drugged but fully conscious.34

The look of Aryana’s eyes reminded me of theirs.35

Her hand still gripped mine – grounding her. I stifled a laugh and coughed in more water. Grounding her to what? I snickered in my head – smart enough this time not to open my mouth – me? What a joke! This right now was exactly what I had wanted. Maybe not in this exact form, but I had wanted it to be over and now it almost was. It would be so easy to stop fighting and just let go. It would all be over and the pain would be numbed. Somehow – I’d have escaped everything. 36

I open my eyes in the water and it stings like it does to clean a skinned knee with rubbing alcohol – right where it’s the most sensitive. I can’t see anything – I am blind. My eyes start adjusting which is really weird considering I was about drown in the middle of a flash flood caused by a dam breaking because I had chosen to stand there in the middle of a storm. Regardless, I can’t see much but I can see something- a little pin prick of light although the water is swirling around me carrying mud, tree branches, and dirt from the dam. 37

How easy it would be to just let go of Aryana’s hand – I’d sink to the bottom, who knows if they would ever find me? I’d suffocate, drowning with my lungs on fire, ironic, since I’m trapped under water without air. Suffocating would hurt but it would kill me faster than living would – a shot to the head instead of the drawn out slow dying of being completely alone. 38

I kind of feel bad though. I had dragged Aryana out here and now being her only chance of surviving, at least I assume since she’s holding on to me – in a way I’d be as bad as a murderer or the person who had raped that girl – because my actions will have taken away Aryana’s choice to live. That girl and that woman who had been washed to sea had lived – though they had gone through hell, and even been broken beyond human sanity – they had survived. I wonder if I can survive living too. I don’t really want to kill someone – break someone down that way. My pieces have just slowly come off – attached with Elmer’s glue rather than everyone else’s Super Glue. 39

I relax my body and start to give up. ‘I’m ready’ I think in my head – sending the thought to any being with power over my situation, sure of suicide’s simplicity.40

My fingers reach towards the top of the water just to feel that its still there and to trace the layer of water just below the surface, drawing pictures in the water for someone above to see.41

I am expecting to feel numb instantly or at least for the pain to fade away. The way taking ibuprofen can kill cramps immediately, not so much because of the drug but because in my head I know its about to stop hurting, and it does because I believe in it.42

As my limp body is twisted and moved like on strings with a puppeteer jerking them cruelly to make a porcelain doll flexible, something solid slams into my hip. My fingers are still holding tightly to Aryana’s hand – or rather she is holding mine – but I definitely am not numb as my entire body spasms in response. The pain races through my spine – a roller coaster hurtling down that first rickety hill – and it travels through my neck and jars my clamped teeth. I felt that – so I’m still alive – still breathing or rather holding my breath, and still being half blinded by the silt in the water.43

I guess I’m a coward because as I feel the bruises forming their multicolored petals on my skin, my resolve is falling out of my soul. It’s like the bucket you carry to pour on a sand castle as a little kid, only to discover all the water leaked out through the crack in the bottom. I’m impatient because the only change is that all along my skin down into the fissures of my soul – pain is oozing out, a virus that can’t be controlled. I wanted to get away from the pain not be swept away by it.44

Rain pelts my face as it breaks above the water’s surface and I blink to clear my sight. I pull Aryana to the surface and, as I glance down the river, I see the familiar landmarks that are close to the mouth of the river. If we get swept out to sea in the middle of a storm – our chances of survival are between none and zero. I start kicking to get to the side of the river. The wind and current push against me – a brick wall to my tiny push – refusing to budge. The water is still flowing fast – there’s no more lightening but the rain still falls steadily. I look at our hands: mine, callused and tan; hers, slender and smooth – yin and yang but both survivors. I realize now that what I want more than anything is to live. To be a survivor – to do good. It’s a cycle. – The woman swept to sea and girl who was raped had both survived and just by surviving they had kept me alive. If I can survive and I can give someone else a reason to live – my life belongs to that cause – not to the permanent pain reliever of suicide.45

Epilogue46

A year later Aryana and Kaila stand hand in hand beside the dam on the day its reconstruction is completed. The Park has commemorated the incident with a bronze plaque on the dam. The inscription written by the girls is engraved in silver: 47

You don't get to choose how you're going to die.48

Or when. 49

You can only decide how you're going to live.50

Now. 51

~Original words by Joan Baez52

Staring at the inscription, “My turning point was realizing I couldn’t control everything – that even suicide wasn’t simple and that’s what opened my eyes” says Kaila slowly, still staring at the inscription as if her eyes see through the solid, encased in memories of another night, when there was a rushing torrent there. 53

“We saved each other– we were both a part of what happened. I saved you because you lived to save me.” Aryana looks at Kaila, seeing beyond the freckles dotting her face, following where her eyes go and picturing the rush of water mirrored in Kaila’s hazel eyes.54

“We shouldn’t be alive- it doesn’t make sense but neither does the way surviving is what numbed my pain. I chose to live and I need to live with that choice”. 55