Suicidal Thoughts

I wrote this piece recently and have submitted it to a few places for publication and to a writing competition. I’m still waiting to hear back, but I realized something while I was waiting: I don’t really want to wait to share it.

I didn’t write this because I wanted an editor to tell me it was worth reading. I wrote it because I was trying to put words to a feeling that can be incredibly difficult to explain, especially to someone who has never experienced it.

So I wanted to share it here, with this community.

Maybe you’re still somewhere in the water yourself. Maybe you love someone who is, and you’ve never understood why they can’t simply “keep swimming.” Maybe you’re a mental health provider trying to understand what profound despair can feel like from inside the person experiencing it. Or maybe you’ve already found your way back to land.

Whatever brings you to it, I hope you take whatever part of it belongs to you. ❤️🌊

***The Ocean Was a Pool***

Yesterday, someone confided in me that she could not fully grasp the emotional reality of wanting to end one’s own life. It’s a sentiment that is often difficult to convey to those who have not experienced such profound despair.

The only way I knew how to explain it was to tell her about the ocean.

I swam a lot as a child. Once, I was caught in a current and began drifting out to sea. At first, I kept swimming. Swimming had always been fun, and I believed that if I just kept moving, I would eventually find my way back.

But then it stopped being fun.

The shore moved farther away. My body grew tired. I could see the people on the beach, and they could see me, but the distance between us kept growing. Eventually, lifeguards had to come and pull me from the water.

Despair feels like that, except it feels as though you have drifted too far for the lifeguards to reach you in time. You keep swimming because everyone tells you to. Keep fighting. Keep going. Hold on. So you fight the current until your body cannot fight anymore. Then you try to float, but eventually you become too tired even for that.

And you go under.

Underwater, there is pressure everywhere. You cannot breathe. You cannot see the bottom, the shore, or the people calling your name. There’s only darkness and the crushing weight of the water.

Except you do not drown.

You do not necessarily want death itself. You want release. You want the pressure to stop. You want one moment when fighting is no longer required of you. But even that release remains beyond your reach. Death does not come; relief does not come. Life continues without feeling like something you have been allowed to live. So you remain beneath the surface. You are alive, unable to breathe, and in excruciating pain.

Eventually, the pain becomes numbness. You stop feeling it, but you are still underwater. You can stay there for years, suspended at a depth where sunlight barely reaches, believing there are only two choices.

Sink or swim.

Then, somehow, the light breaks through.

For a moment, it reminds you that a surface still exists. So you fight again. You kick and reach until you catch one breath. Just one. Then the current drags you back under. Night after night, you repeat this. You fight. You surface. You breathe. You sink. Then one day, you reach the surface and remain there long enough to look around. That is when you realize the ocean is no longer an ocean.

It is a pool.

Maybe it was never an ocean at all. Maybe it only felt endless because the pool was so deep, the bottom was invisible, and you had spent so long unable to touch anything solid.

The water is still real. So is the exhaustion. So are the years you spent beneath the surface. But the distance is no longer infinite. There is an edge somewhere, and there are people waiting beside it. They may not know how to swim. From the shore, they call your name and reach across a distance their arms cannot cross. They want to help, but some are afraid the current will take them too.

Others can only watch, carrying the guilt of standing on solid ground while you fight for every breath. Their inability to reach you does not mean they do not care. It means they cannot enter the water without risking being lost in it themselves.

So you swim toward the edge.

Not because you deserve to struggle alone, but because you have to get close enough to reach the hands extended toward you. You have to pull yourself from the water before anyone can help you recover from what it took to survive there.

And that is what I did.

I swam.

I found the edge, took hold of it, and pulled myself out.

At first, even the air felt foreign. Breathing hurt because my lungs had learned to survive without a full breath. Feeling again hurt too. Emotions that had been numbed beneath the water returned all at once. The sunlight was almost too bright after so much darkness, and the quiet felt unfamiliar without the roar of the current surrounding me. Even peace felt strange.

But beneath that unfamiliarity was relief.

I sat there while droplets of water gathered on my skin and disappeared, little by little. I did not force them away. I let the sunlight dry me naturally. With every drop that evaporated, my body learned that it no longer had to accept the pressure of being underwater as normal.

Then I placed my feet on the ground.

There was something solid beneath me at last. I could feel the warmth of the sun against my skin. I could smell the trees. I could see color, shape, and substance in everything around me. The world was no longer a distant image distorted by water.

I took my first steps back onto land.

Other people could not heal me, but they could support me while I healed. They could sit beside me while I learned how to breathe again. They could bring warmth, offer steadiness, and remind me that I did not have to return to the water simply because it was the only place I had known for so long.

I am still learning how to live on land. Sometimes it rains. Sometimes water rises around my ankles. Sometimes a storm soaks me completely and, for one frightened moment, my body remembers the cold, the darkness, and the pull of the current.

But rain is not an ocean.

Even if I become wet again, even if another storm comes or the ground briefly floods, I will remember that there is earth beneath my feet. I know what the water is now. I know where its edges are. I know that darkness can distort the size of a place and make a pool appear endless.

I once believed survival meant never going beneath the surface again. Now I understand that survival means remembering that the water has an edge, even when I cannot see it. It means trusting that solid ground still exists, even when I cannot feel it beneath my feet.

Storms may return. I may feel the current pulling at me again. But I no longer mistake every flood for an ocean.

I know how to swim. I know my way back to land.

And that is how the ocean became a pool.

#sad #Disability