The sea loved the moonWhen she was supposed to love the shore.The moon knewAnd hence made his intentions known. That she should love the shoreWho was destined for her.Yet his protests seemed weak. And even when he pushed her towards the shore-She always retreated back.To want, to need, to love the moonFor all she's worth.Everyone said, it wasn't meant to happen.Yet, the Tsunami rose that night for their union.

When they (the men, the scavengers)come for you, do not give yourselfto them so easily.Wear your strength like armour,fight like a beast.Do not let them tell you thatyou belong to them.Be fearless.Be a lion.Be like lava.Rip them apart,and burn their bones.And when you are done,tell the world that you belong to no man.That you are a lady,a warrior,a tsunami, and you belong only to yourself.

Sometimes it can be as brutally overwhelming as a tidal wave flooding every orifice, the suffocation, the pressure, the immensity of this damnable depression like an ocean, unsurmountable. It swallows me whole and gnaws at my very bones. It floods me over and over, drowning me over and over... It is a torturous broken record player with a scratched disc on repeat, the wailing disrupting any possible good remaining after the tsunami. It wails and wails inside my ribcage and inside my skull. I cannot make it stop.

I guess I was lucky I didn't drown, or smother in the thick, black, icy mud that the river left behind in its slow withdrawal back within its banks.I didn't feel lucky.When I regained consciousness, my head and ribs winning the battle with the rest of my body for sharp, almost unbearable pain, my first thought was Chrissy. Chrissy, pulled away from me by the merciless power of the water. Chrissy, lost somewhere, maybe injured, calling for me and I wasn't there for her. Chrissy, beautiful, wonderful Chrissy, quite probably lying in the mud, dead!My scream of anguish, of pain and loss, echoed through the empty Liverpool streets. There was no shame or embarrassment in that shout, that bellow of emotion. I had lost the woman I loved. Nothing I’d ever felt compared to the agony, the gut-wrenching loss of that moment.I cried. I sat there in the middle of a street I didn't recognise, not knowing how far the wave had carried me, and cried.