Drowning

It's cold. Sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's warm... it's cold. It's dark. Sometimes it's blinding, sometimes it's bright... it's dark. Whether it's cold, hot, warm; whether it's dark, blinding, or bright, I feel like I'm drowning. But I can breathe, I can always breathe, yet I feel like I'm drowning. It's cold. It's dark. I'm drowning. No matter how much I swim, no matter how much I struggle, no matter what I do, no matter what I try, I'm still drowning.

I wonder how deep this ocean is. I wonder how big this ocean is. I thought I could figure it out, I had a dream... an imagination, maybe I could see this ocean, maybe I could sit atop the ocean, and watch the ocean... observe the ocean. So I stopped. I stopped struggling, I stopped moving, I surrendered. To the currents, to the cold, to the darkness, to this ocean I was trapped in. And I watched. I watched the ocean, finding every disturbance, finding how the temperature changes, finding how the brightness changes, finding every impurity I could, I watched the ocean. I was still drowning.

There must be a way on top of this ocean. After watching for... who knows how long. I closed my eyes. I noticed the cold, the heat, the temperature. I noticed the dark, the light, the brightness. I noticed the drowning. As I did this, something magical happened. I didn't get to the top of the ocean, not yet, but the temperature began to fade, the brightness began to wane. It didn't stop being cold, it didn't start being hot, the temperature simply began to disappear. The darkness wasn't overtaken by light, the brightness simply began to wane. I was still drowning, but I could breathe. I've always been able to breathe, but I noticed that breathing.

So I stopped my preservations with the ocean around me, and directed all of my attention towards that breath. I noticed the rise of my body as I inhaled. The fall of my body as I exhaled. The more I focused on my breath, similar to the temperature, similar to the brightness, my breath slowly began to dissipate. It was when my breath completely disappeared that I stopped drowning.

I opened my eyes and I wasn't drowning. I saw everything while I saw nothing. I saw sitting atop the ocean that I had wished to be atop of for so long. It wasn't cold, it wasn't hot, it wasn't warm. It wasn't dark, it wasn't blinding, it wasn't bright. I could breathe and I couldn't breathe. Here I was, sitting on top of the ocean I had felt trapped in for so long. I looked down at the ocean, I looked at the place I had felt was my prison. And I saw a puddle.