The Island.

My ex used to draw this picture over and over and over again. It was a shitty little outline of an island, with a stick-figure person sitting alone on the island, leaning against a palm tree. In the background was a plane burning and crashing into the ocean. There was a shark, a fish, and a whale in the water. The island was tiny, and a coconut had fallen from the tree and smacked him in the head.

The fact that he drew this numerous times should have been a larger clue to his inner distress, but I found it charming and humorous- as if the whole story was a larger comment on the state of the world in general.

Sometimes we only see what we want to.

I always thought there was something wrong with him- in the sense that he might just be a genius artist who was maybe molested as a child, and struggled with depression. In actuality, he was just gay.

But maybe I already knew that? I used to jest with him aggressively about his secret love for penis. Until it turned out to be true.

I don’t really care to discuss this matter right now though, the whole point is- no man is an island, right? Untrue. We are all lonely little islands, until we find someone whom we’re ready to share that island with. Existence in itself is lonely enough, when you become aware of the fact that only you know what is actually going on in your head.

This may sound morbid, but wait. Did anyone here read the story about the fisherman lost at seas for 436 days? There’s a book about it, but I only read the article on The Guardian. This man’s experience is 1000 times worse than what was imagined in the movie Castaway.

The guy in real life, the fisherman, had lost his friend during the period he was a castaway and had been surviving on a diet of rainwater & urine, raw jellyfish & turtles. When his friend died while in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, he kept communicating with his friend’s corpse to maintain sanity. He drifted for days, and days, and days, and days, and survived. Why?

Was it his family? Was it insanity or sanity that kept him going? Is it an evolved trait to want to keep going, when there is no sign of progress? This man was the island my ex always drew. And it took him around a year to actually speak to press about his experience. He suffered severe PTSD after the incident, and could neither be left alone nor brought near any sort of body of water.

Then you have people who willingly go into ashrams or take vows of silence. People who want to detach. Yet in these situations, there is still a choice- if they were lost at sea, would they last as long as the man who missed the world?

I always wonder, does my ex still draw these images? Or has he now added company to his island?

The world seems so big, yet so far away. I don’t think I could survive even an hour without contact. My mind in itself roams so much, I never quite feel settled. But is it sane to be anchored?

If I had to draw a picture right now, it would be blank. What do you see these days?