Tidal Flow

Tidal Flow

The pounding of the waves against the ferry's hull matches the pounding of our hearts as we sail upon familiar tides. We are sailors, this time, although neither of us has say over how and where we are going. All we know is that these currents, upon which we float, have forced us together once more; have forced us together, are pushing us along and will force me further still down the Parramatta River.
Through the rock and rolling of the ferry our eyes somehow meet. All around us tourists snap shots to send back to far off family. Children scramble about on the deck as though they had been born into a world of gyrating floors. Yet, through this commotion, this mismatch of colour and sound and movement all grinding and sliding against each other, we somehow lock eyes. Though the ebb and flow of time has aged us, you still look with the same brand of do-you-want-to eyes. Just as you did back then...
We were young, and the only monotonous parts of our lives were those wake-early-arrive-late-return-at-dark-no-time-between school days; those weekends spent doing our homework, although I wouldn't call what we did homework. It was more under cover giggles and darkness dares. Now monotony is all I have.
Is there anything more to living than monotony? Am I living? Perhaps I am no longer alive but rather a part of the muddy river bed we float above, my body lodged, tangled in the intertwined roots that reach for you from the murky depths. My life now seems over, seeping from my body as I decay, and polluting all that I ever touched until there is nothing left but my shell. That life, which seeps from me, spreads the disease of grief through cocktail party friends and lets-do-lunch-no-brunch business partners.
Maybe one day I'll come loose; break free of this monotonous sludge. Break free and wash downstream towards the promise of a crisp, clean beach; the kind of cove where a wife can lie by my side and kids can build crystalline castles out of the postcard sand under a postcard sun. Maybe you can come too. Maybe... You certainly wanted to back then...
But we were never meant to coexist in that picture perfection. No one can ever achieve an idyllic life without life-shopping the heck out of it; even then it would not be perfect. Even with perfection just a summer shower away, there is always more to be wanted, more to be needed out of life. We seek our own perfection like the river seeks the sea. We follow each twist and turn, getting swept up and pushed along, all in the vain hope that perfection is just through the estuary. I blindly followed my perfection to the city. My river: law school; my ocean: my own law firm. I never found that ocean. Your river didn't follow the same path. It twisted in on itself, pooled and stagnated; leaving you left in the same old place with the same old non-ambitions.
Even as the boat's gentle swaying rolls me like a ball towards your handshake, I can tell that you aren't alone in your stagnant pool of no hope. A gold band, a mention of a young boy; you seemed to have moved on. Or perhaps they too had been caught in your tidal flow and swept to a complete stop with you. You ask trivial questions about my life, which all eventually boil down to me summing up my existence as empty.
I can't help but wonder about what it would be like if I had a boy. Would our sons grow up side by side? Share homework, giggles, dares and sleepless nights under the cover of darkness? I wonder how much of what we were was biologically set in stone and how much was pure chance. I wonder... I see questions building like waves behind your eyes. They probably aren't about us, as much as I'd like them to be. We stand in mutual wonderment, swaying side to side with the movement of the ferry, so perfectly in synch with each other yet so out of synch at the same time.
Our synchronicity is shattered, however, by the automated droning of the ferry's announcement system as it burbles out, Abbotsford! You heave yourself from the railing you had been leaning on and start to make your way to the gangway. I follow, needing to take in all of what you have become for one last time. You turn and deliver me one last dare; I see it in your eyes. You roughly wrap your arms around me before whispering in my ear something from years gone by; something you once told me after one of our dares.
I stand perplexed and in awe of your ability to perplex me. Even though I can no longer see the dock to Abbotsford, I stand staring. Tides change, people change but still you and I will remain... Those words that tickled my ear, as much as my heart, still leave me confused. It's like I've been left high and dry with no way of returning to my ocean. I am confused still, as I step ashore at Circular Quay, make my way home to my brick-box flat, where I will live out the rest of my life without experiencing another tidal flow like that again.