𝑺𝑻𝑨𝑹𝑮𝑰𝑹𝑳 | ᵍʳᵉʸˢ ᵃⁿᵃᵗᵒᵐʸ

𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ | ¹⁹⁹²

𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐇𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐀𝐍, 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟐

I was four.
Four years old and invisible.

And sometimes my world was so damn loud
that I just couldn't take it anymore.

Maybe that's why I discovered that water wasn't just for bathing or drinking.

It also had the ability to put me in a state where I could breathe. It could take me to a place where everything was just so peaceful.

"Missy, hurry up, I have to prepare my rounds," my mother would call from somewhere, lost in the vastness of our big house. Sometimes I felt like we lived in different universes.

Like my father, she was always so busy.

But I was somewhere else.

I was underwater, at the bottom of the bathtub. Here I could scream as loud as I wanted without anyone hearing me.

The tingling spread through my head.
Like lights illuminating the darkness, making the world around me seem blurry and yet somehow clearer.

Then, when I thought I was going to pass out, when I went beyond the point where I would normally have surfaced, it was just me and the water. It was as if we were the only things in the cosmos.

It felt like magic, like a precious moment of control in a world where I had so little of it.

I didn't know at the time that it was a lack of oxygen that caused the rush.

I just knew it felt good.

And when I was five years old and I heard my parents fighting again outside the bathroom door, I wanted that feeling to last forever.

So I dived deeper and stayed longer.

My lungs screamed for oxygen, but I pushed it away. I didn't want to return to the surface, not to the reality where my parents were fighting their own wars, preoccupied with life and death decisions and tragic moments, forgetting about me.

"Is Missy still in the bathtub?! You said you put her to bed an hour ago!"

I heard my mother yell at him, her voice muffled and distant as if it came from another planet.

"I have things to do, Addison."

My father sounded annoyed. He had a job to perform, patients to save. "I'll go check on her."

'𝘕𝘰, 𝘯𝘰, 𝘯𝘰, 𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘺𝘦𝘵', were the desperate thoughts of my five-year-old self.

I didn't want to let go of the silence and the tingling in my body.

I wanted it to last forever.

Then I felt his hands pull me out of the water.

And my little innocent world suddenly
became dark and cold.