Foreword

I think

I stared at the two words, both so small, neither with any meaning beyond them. I stared at the “I” that started straight but subtly curvedtorwards its end in tangent with a thickening line of led spraying away to nearly intangible specks of dust. I blew at it nonetheless, cleaning the page before turning my attention to “think”, a word so far greater than its previous I was surprised I could even read it. I looked at the sloppily drawn “t” whose cross was attached to the “h”. Not for any stylistic purpose, but simply because it was how I wrote. I believe I spent close to an hour staring at that otherwise blank page, searching for any excuse to simply close the notebook.

I skimmed my thumb across the intimidatingly thick stack of blank lined paper behind it, before giving up.. It was a gift from my wife, who never accounted for the fact that the easiest thing for me to do with said notebook is to not write in it. I was never one to express myself to others let alone to myself. I believe that was part of the point. A way to, “record how I feel during the most important years of my life”, were her exact words. “One day, you can show it to our son”, another line she expertly rehearsed in an effort to get me to use it, and while I’m stubborn, her ability to persuade usually overpowered any resilience I had.

I grabbed the notebook from my desk and went towards the door, stuffing it in my jacket as I went. No matter how isolated I was in my office, an entire floor away from my wife, I felt like I was being watched. Like the simplest admittance to feeling stressed or angry being heard or seen by another living soul would result in my death.

I was going to give it one more shot, write somewhere where I could be alone, and if that didn’t work, then I’d give up.

I passed by my wife who sat elegantly in the living room beside the warm lit fire, as I made my way to the front door. 

“Where are you going?”

It was a valid question. It was already nearing 10 PM at the time and I wasn’t one to leave the house if I didn’t need to.

“I was gonna take the boat out with some friends, do some fishing”

She looked puzzled for a moment, never lifting her gentle hand off her six month bump, something she managed to always do regardless of where she was.

“Oh, okay well have fun, tell them I say hi”

I smiled, a fake, forced smile, but it passed the test. She had no reason to not believe me. We’d been together for nearing five years with a baby on the way. The love of my life sat before me happily showing me nothing but trust yet I lied to her face, all in an attempt to hide the fact I was writing in a journal she gifted me.

The thick heavy rope, dampened and stained with decades of hardened salty water scraped against my far too tested hands as I undid the not. The similarly aged flashlight I hadn’t changed the batteries on since I bought the damn thing held steadily between my gritted teeth. The low quality black paint chipped off the metal frame leaving some sort of chemical residue in my mouth but I didnt pay it any mind. I dropped the rope at my feet haphazardly before harshly pushing off the dock, sending my small boat outwards. 

The stars were loud, especially a few miles out to sea. Any residual smog from the nearby city wasn’t a concern out there. I laid my head on one of the life jackets I had stowed away, and stared up at the night sky. This was the last thing I remembered from that night. It wasn’t until that following day where I’d wake up in the hospital, and fall down a rabbit hole I haven’t climbed out of in nearly thirty years.

They handed me my journal. I don’t remember who, nor is it important who it was, but someone, most likely a nurse, handed it to me in a clear sealed bag. It was bone dry, despite them finding me washed up on shore. She said that they found it inside one of my jacket pockets, alongside a pencil, some spare change, and a pocket knife, one I have no recollection of ever owning.

My boat was never found. No evidence of it wrecking, hardly any evidence of it being out there in the first place. The only things that are known for certain from that night are that at roughly 11 PM, I pushed myself away from the dock, and that following morning at 4:13 AM precisely, I was found by the morning fishing crew, washed up on the beach, with those exact items left in my possession.

The loss of the boat was a devastating one, but the conversation I had with my wife was more so. She yelled, cried, said I could have died, and asked all the questions any sane human being would, yet I had absolutely nothing for her in return. I didn’t know why I went out there, what happened in those few precious hours, or what happened to my equally precious boat. It was an anomaly that both of us just had to accept. We had a child on the way afterall, so our attention shifted fairly quickly.

It wasn’t until months later, long after our son was born, when I remembered the journal. I had thrown the sealed bag on my desk after returning from the hospital, and it quickly got swept into piles of paperwork I never got around to, until one day.

The clear plastic poked out under a few envelopes, shining a subtle glare into my eye, as if calling to me, begging for attention it knew I’d never give. I reluctantly grabbed the bag and ripped it open, dumping its contents onto the only clear spot on my desk. As it fell, I caught a quick glimpse of the notebook's interior. It looked as though a page was filled. I quickly grabbed it off my desk and… a lifetime’s worth of confusion flooded my mind.

The notebook was filled. Every page, not a single line left empty. Every “th” perfectly attached just as I write, every grammatical choice, every misspelling, everything down to the angle of the comma was a perfect match to my hand writing, yet I have no recollection of a single word of it.

Within the time between 11 PM, and 4:13 AM, I wrote ___ pages, ____ words, ____ characters, and as I made my way out to sea on my boat, I realized something. I forgot a pencil.

This is that journal.