There's no feeling that comes close to the feeling of drowning without being in water. You can't breathe and you feel like your going to combust from the inside out. Of course you won't actually explode, but you aren't focusing on that. You're focusing on the issue that's making you unable to breathe and causing you to cry silently in the middle of the night, keeping you distracted in school and making you throw up because the anxiety and depression is making you physically sick. The feeling of having no way out, and not even continuing to look for one anymore. Because once you start to get used to the feeling of all of this, you just become numb. And when the few times you aren't numb, you're in so much pain you're back to drowning. Numbness and pain are both equally bad. But most would choose the numbness over pain any day, because who wants to cry so hard they're holding their stomach and mouth to keep from making a sound in the middle of the night? Who wants to lay in bed for days on end not showering or eating because it is literally all too much? The fact that you're still breathing is taking up all of your energy. So maybe the numbness is better after all. Because it's the one thing that blocks the pain, even for a little while.
