Head Above Water

By Teeya Doshi

You don’t really need water to drown- yet drowning feels the same on land or at sea. The way you’re stuck in a storm, desperately trying to keep your head above water. The way it hurts so bad that you can hardly breathe, let alone cry for help. The ache in your chest be it from the emotional pain or your burning lungs. 

Worst of all, the calming lull of the sea, which you find out you don’t really hate as much as you should. 

The way you feel so small. Powerless. Pathetic. Surrounded. At sea by water, on land by emotions. It feels the same on both land and in the ocean, where you’re too busy trying not to sink to even consider swimming back to shore.  

That’s when they ask you why you don’t try harder to fight back, instead of letting the current control you. Further picking at your wounds by telling you to swim, as if they weren’t the ones who let you fall in the first place. They don’t get how exhausting it is to fight back when the waves keep crashing over you again. And again. And again, and then you realise maybe you were never meant to be on land. How is it any better if you’re always going to have to look over your shoulder, afraid of being pushed in again? 

And this time, you’re not so sure you’ll survive it. 

So you’ll fight, already knowing you’ll lose. On the bad days, the ocean will become a sanctuary instead of a prison. You’ll think that giving up is all that’s left. That you’ve been fighting for so long now, it’ll be over soon.

That is, until your traitorous heart reminds you that you need to see land one last time. That even though there’s a risk of falling, it’s worth it. 

You deserve that.

 You deserve to know what it’s like not to give up. To not just survive but also live again.

And maybe someone will push you back in, but now you know how to survive. You’re the living proof that it is possible to swim back to shore even when there's a storm. So you’ll survive it. You’ll find a way out of it. Until then, though, you just have to keep pushing past the waves. You have to fight them, no matter how peaceful and quiet it seems underwater. You were never meant for that peace and quiet.

 You were the storm, not the one stuck in it. 

 So just for the slightest possibility of that, you keep pushing. Fighting. Swimming, and then maybe one day you’ll cross these waters again, not alone. Not drowning…but finally breathing. 

By Teeya Doshi