Maybe I should learn to swim

I woke up in the water, suffocating for air, not really sure how I got here in the first place. I look around and it’s all blurry, but strange enough I can see stars. I can see them so clearly from below and I feel like I’m moving further away from them as the time passes by.

It must be nice up there. They probably don’t even know what drowning is like. How can they know? They’re not the one under the water right now. They’re shining for one another but their light can barely reach my skin and the warmth is all covered up by the coldness of the water. I look around again and there’s still nothing. What’s scares me is not the depth and the darkness of this part of the water. But it’s the part of me that refuse to move, the urge to let all the air out. To show those stars that I’m… drowning? That can’t be. Why am I not moving? Why do I let myself sinking deeper and further down?

I think I’ve been here before. Many times now that I try to think about it. And for each of those time, before I could even figure anything out, I’m washed back ashore again. And when the morning comes, the warm sand and the sun are enough for me to forget everything, laying all there on the beach enjoying the birds and the seagulls flying ahead again.

But this time, it’s unbearable. I’m sinking deeper and deeper away from the surface and I’m not even sure if it is actually possible to be washed back to the land, if I’m already way down here. I really want to believe that I’ll be fine but why do I even try to swim at all if I’ll be thrown back in here again and again, just like the many times that this absurdity had happened before? Trying to recall, it might have been because of a storm, a flood, or it was just me mindlessly walking straight in here myself. For whatever reason, it was bound to happen. Why do I even fight?

I look up one more time. I see the stars. they’re all still there. But a thought come to mind. Maybe, up there, in that void, they’re also struggling to pull together all the gas in that emptiness of space. There isn’t even any land for them to swim for. And yet they’re burning and glowing. for… nothing? I don’t know. Maybe that’s everything. Maybe the whole point is to just exist. I remember last time I cried on the beach after realizing that I didn’t let myself drown. The moon was beautiful and that’s only because I hold my breath long enough. Maybe I want to see that again. And maybe there’s something else I’ll admire after I get out of here.

Maybe I should hold my breath a bit longer, and a little more, for however long the air remaining in my chest would allow me to. The wave will come. And while I’m here, I’ll be the warmth that this place is devoid of. Something else may find the comfort in that. And maybe I should learn to swim.

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The opening of this piece was inspired by the beginning of the film “I Still Exist” by justin kaminuma.