Drowning

Water surrounded every inch of me. It was a beautiful feeling, being trapped under the surface of something living, yet of something that was killing me.

People say death is the hardest thing to conquer, people say dying is the worst fear to acquire. But in that moment, that moment of pain and guilt, that moment of me dying, I realized death wasn't hard to conquer, life was.

I think that's why I let myself go a little farther than I should have. All of the pain of life was killing me more than death. So when I lost my balance and I could have grabbed my best friends hand, I didn't. And when I fell off of the dock into the cold, yet bitterly sweet, ocean water, I let myself fall a little farther than I should have.

I know how to swim, obviously I do, it's just hard to swim when you realize that life isn't beautiful. You know life isn't beautiful after your heart is crushed by someone who has never loved you. And when your mother dies after three years of pain. You know for certain life isn't beautiful when you slip and fall into the ocean.

I looked up, my eyes stinging with salt water and my mouth being burned by the taste it gave. I looked up and seen the helicopters and faintly heard sirens through the water. People were trying to save me.

But they couldn't save me If I didn't want to be saved. I was trapped in a war between living and dying. As hard as it was to admit, I was cheering for the wrong team.

I wasn't suicidal, I wasn't raised poorly, and I wasn't someone who needed to die. But maybe I was someone who in the moment wanted to die. In the moment I wanted to die. Yet, a moment can't last forever and a second can't last a year. So I was trapped with time, moments and seconds passed, but I needed more time.

The water was beginning to fill my lungs. I was struggling to get anything out. The burning was killing me. The burning was the worst part of the dying.

It was like when your a kid and you challenge your friends to see who can hold their breath the longest and soon enough one of you will give up because you know you can't handle it any longer. But I couldn't come up. I couldn't come up now I wasn't swimming because my limbs wouldn't move and I was floating downwards. But I still wouldn't swim if I wanted too because this was a metaphor to my life and if I died I wouldn't have either of the problems I was having now.

When I began to breath in the water it got so much worse. I couldn't feel myself but I could see the blueness of my body. I couldn't feel it at all though. I couldn't feel the freezing of my body. I was numb. I was thanking my body for being smart enough to numb me.

I looked up again, I was so much farther down. I was so far falling and I couldn't, wouldn't, stop it. The helicopters were sending down men in swimming gear and people were crowding the dock.

That's when I seen her, my best friend, the last person who loved me. The last person who wanted me to live. I think that's what changed my mind. The love I felt when I seen her blurry, barely recognizable, face. The water was beginning to cover up faces and it was getting darker.

So I began to try, I began to attempt to move. I felt frozen and unused, I felt trapped. My eyes were beginning to close without my consent. Darkness surrounded me but I still tried to go back.

I was trying for love, no matter what kind it was. I was trying for the one person who still believed in me. But alas I was trapped, trapped by the murderous water around me.

I'd waited too long, the time that trapped me was immensely abusing its power. I needed time to think, I'd made my choice but my body had fell too quickly. My life had fallen much too quickly.

I couldn't see or hear, I could barely feel the water surrounding me in such a mythical way. I couldn't do anything I should be able to do. But I could think, I could only hear my thoughts surrounding my brain and choking it.

I began to feel a little warmer, maybe this was what happened when you died, your body tried to comfort you with warmth. But then I realized that the warmth was people. Someone was holding me.

I was still floating, I was moving upward, but I couldn't control what happened to my body or how I was moving.

I began to feel weaker. My chest hurt and my heart was barely even beating. My breathing, well I wasn't breathing. I was sure I was dead. It didn't make sense.

Yet I wasn't seeing a light, I wasn't seeing the bright light at the end of the dark tunnel that would take away my pain. That's when it hit me. I was dying in a way that wasn't natural.

I wasn't going to live, I wasn't going to do anything. All I could be known as was a number, a statistic. I was fading, fading like clothing in the sun.

Everything I'd worked at, the money I'd earned, the lives I'd been involved with, it was all a waste. In the moment I realized that it was all a waste, and I'd made it happen. I'd killed myself, admitting that it was intentional was the worst part of the dying.

I was dying, but I held onto the hope that maybe I could hang on for just one more second. Maybe I could hang on just long enough to stay