drowning, living

This is living.

This is living, as your your toes dip deep, as your surrounding transforms, as blurry lines and shades replace contrasting shapes. It's dark and lifeless down here, it's irrelevant out there, but it's relevant here as you penetrate through the space, as you're inside yourself, roaming the unknown, roaming the forgotten, roaming the crumpled flowers and the blades.

When you return out there, there are some possibilities. You come changed, or unchanged; lighter than air or heavier than mountain.

It's living if you go back to the shore bringing back those seaweeds. Those familiar objects. Those that are irrelevant. Bringing them on your shoulders, kneeling down, scratching the sand as the wave comes washing over you, as the tears come washing over you, as they flow enveloping the empty lot inside you, as you become aware of the hollowness inside of you, as the space grows, and it hurts, it hurts.

It's living as you break down and tear up until your lungs are devoid of air.

This is living. You feel alive; this is where life begins.

And life ends as you go out there giving out false smiles, feeling happiest but deep down discontented, because it's all pretense, it's you fooling yourself, it's not who you are; it's not living. Yet it's not dying either.

Living is being on the edge of life and death, feeling pain and joy at their utmost. Agony and gratification are the same thing—they are one. Life and death are one. It's living if you feel like you're dying, if you're aching, if you're one, if you know that you are one, if you know the pain of being one.

And as you rip the skin on your knees, as you rip the guise off your face, as you get back to that one and one only you, as you raise your frail hand up, as the gentle waves whisper to you, as you sink back to the blue, you are—

This is—

drowning.

living.