Once, when I was younger, I tried to see how long I could hold my breath underwater.

I was almost a whole minute in when my lungs felt like they were about to explode so I forced myself to break through the surface to try to fill my entire being back with oxygen.

Now, I feel like sometimes I forget to breathe.

Breathe in the sense that it keeps me living.

Simply inhale and exhale to expand and collapse the lungs enough to keep my body afloat. I learned in science class once about involuntary and voluntary bodily functions; breathing was one of the former but now, I wonder if people held their breath just to see what it feels like. To see, for a brief moment, what it felt like to just not. Exist without really living.

In, out.

It was supposed to be easy, natural (so why does it feel like the hardest thing to do in the world sometimes?).

I’ve been trying to break through the surface of the water, pull apart the thick cover and gasp in the air above but lately, I’ve had silhouettes and shadows of self-doubt and insecurity latch on with ropes that leave burn marks to anchor me down. They whisper false promises, sing lullabies that lull me to sleep.

Ashes, ashes we all fall down.

If you close your eyes long enough, the line between darkness and sleep begin to look like the other. Bleak, cold obscurity was a much more comforting place to be in when you confuse the two and I found myself, eyelashes fluttering close enough to touch cheekbones, roaming with arms in front to try and save me from the fall.

The light beyond the surface beckons me like a lighthouse, trying to lead me back to the shore despite the riotous waves from the storm crashing against the deck of the boat.

See the thing is, I’ve always prided myself in jumping straight into the storm without a second thought, without pausing in between blinks and I think that’s one of my greatest downfalls. I’ve always been unafraid of the landing, hurt and heartache was never something that kept me from doing things. I always let loose ends get tied up in the wrong knots, cut them off with fingers for scissors because my own never learned the lesson of holding on.

I think, in a sense, I might be drowning — have sea salt sting at exit wounds just as a constant reminder of the bruised and the empty and the static and the kind of aching I’ve never really known how to speak of.

I’ve always tried to reach out to the grab the palm of a hand that I’m never really sure was there in the first place, try to save myself by calling out to other people without really listening to my own (the water always seems to jumble out the cry for help).

Here, in this body of water, as the oceans try to wash away any remains of sins and tragedies and grief I find myself wondering, when does sadness go away?

Does it ever go away?