#installment two

it's painful --  a gut-wrenching, side-splitting pain that starts from the top of your head and travels all the way through your body to the tips of your toes. everything hurts, and the pain isn't limited to the physical; it's almost like your soul hurts -- if you believe in a soul -- and nothing you do can stop it. well, that's not exactly accurate; you can kick your feet and hold your breath and force yourself back above water but like i said before, that's hard and drowning's so very easy. the thing about this kind of drowning is that there's nobody to save you. either you save yourself, or you die. and maybe death is a preferable alternative to living and maybe it's just a cop-out because dealing with life is getting harder every day and your grip on reality is quickly slipping and you're very slowly turning into a monster, into a mutation of who you used to be, and you can't stop the metamorphosis. i've been under the waves, i've tasted the salt water, i've felt the burning as my lungs cried out for oxygen, and i've kept my body firmly planted under. i'd like to say that i've recovered, that i no longer want to be under water, that i'm happily swimming amid my peers, that i can feel the sun on my skin again;  yes, i'd like to say all of that, but i can't. see, here's the thing: i don't take knife to skin anymore and haven't for a while but -- and here's where i'm brutally honest -- tearing open my skin wasn't my way of staying under longer. no, it was far more macabre than that. it was my way of staying alive, of preventing myself from going too far, it was, in essence, my flotation device.  and what happens to a novice swimmer when you take away her flotation device? she drowns