It was me all of the time. I was at the center of everything when the news hit. Rock fuckin hard in the murky pools of the Chesapeake while I looked overboard longing for an evasive maneuver. Goddamn it hurt so much that I felt my teeth chatter and my lungs expand so rapidly that my eye sockets welled. My arms ached and my fists clenched at the idea of nothingness that lay ahead. The swell of the tide would drag me deeper and deeper into the green until all that was me existed no more.