We are all born on boats, coming from a source of which we know naught, and heading into an oblivion of which we can only imagine. Most of us are delivered onto vessels to live with our families, only leaving once adolescence entreats an independence that necessitates our sailing solo. Others live forever on the same craft, never venturing past that which man has made to separate us from the swirling, unknown waters below. Still others must learn to be autonomous almost at once, for they are set free on the sea only as babes, forced out of circumstance to ride the waves in nothing like a basket like the infant Moses. My juvenescence fell somewhere in the middle of that gamut; I lived on the ship of my family for the first several years
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In the midst of being tossed from my vessel I had shut my eyes and plugged my nose, thinking that maybe, maybe if I could not sense my downfall that marked the transition between a life breathing in the atmosphere, to one of complete submersion, then it could not be real. Yet the responsiveness of my nerves betrayed me instantly as the cool sting of the water pierced my skin, enveloping my body in a freezing liquid. All of the defenses I had so carefully constructed had failed me. No longer did the nearly impenetrable walls of pure logic keep out emotion. Feeling diffused through my casing and chilled me to the very bone with a dampness that lingers long after the wetness has …show more content…
Every time I tried to take a breath of air, another paper or project was there to stop me from filling my lungs completely. There was no time to gather the strength I needed. I couldn’t reach my ship to put my feet firmly on solid ground as I expected I would be able to. This storm was too immense. Instead of rolling waves ferrying me from crest to crest in the sea, mountainous breakers crashed down, plunging my struggling head beneath the surface. Worse yet, the precipitation was so heavy that coming up for air only offered me a lesser degree of submersion. By now, my boat, my security, my confidence, had drifted even farther away. Separately, I could have born the rain or the waves, but together they conceived the perfect storm to drown me. It is cliché to say that depression is a lot like drowning, but only because it is so accurate of a comparison that nothing else comes close to describing the feeling. Depression keeps everything at bay in the same way that water dulls everything from sight to sound; I am behind a veil that voices only carry through in distant whispers while I stare ahead, watching everything pass by around me but deriving nothing from
In the midst of being tossed from my vessel I had shut my eyes and plugged my nose, thinking that maybe, maybe if I could not sense my downfall that marked the transition between a life breathing in the atmosphere, to one of complete submersion, then it could not be real. Yet the responsiveness of my nerves betrayed me instantly as the cool sting of the water pierced my skin, enveloping my body in a freezing liquid. All of the defenses I had so carefully constructed had failed me. No longer did the nearly impenetrable walls of pure logic keep out emotion. Feeling diffused through my casing and chilled me to the very bone with a dampness that lingers long after the wetness has …show more content…
Every time I tried to take a breath of air, another paper or project was there to stop me from filling my lungs completely. There was no time to gather the strength I needed. I couldn’t reach my ship to put my feet firmly on solid ground as I expected I would be able to. This storm was too immense. Instead of rolling waves ferrying me from crest to crest in the sea, mountainous breakers crashed down, plunging my struggling head beneath the surface. Worse yet, the precipitation was so heavy that coming up for air only offered me a lesser degree of submersion. By now, my boat, my security, my confidence, had drifted even farther away. Separately, I could have born the rain or the waves, but together they conceived the perfect storm to drown me. It is cliché to say that depression is a lot like drowning, but only because it is so accurate of a comparison that nothing else comes close to describing the feeling. Depression keeps everything at bay in the same way that water dulls everything from sight to sound; I am behind a veil that voices only carry through in distant whispers while I stare ahead, watching everything pass by around me but deriving nothing from