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when I tried to make sense of my experience


If life was an ocean and to live was to exist within it

Then happiness would be to float along the surface

And depression would be to sink beneath the waves

Anxiety would be the turbulence of the rougher waters

And the pools of stillness would be the mind at perfect ease.

But if depression is sinking

Then swimming is struggling to return to a state of floating

Of happiness

And from what I understand, so long as we live, so long as we remain in the water,

We will have moments of stillness and moments of turbulence.

We will float

We will sink

And we will swim to the surface

Only to sink again.

Depression, as I understand it, is an anchor on your ankle that drags you down time and time again when you're simply trying to float.

And every time that you struggle,

That you swim,

That you drag that weight back to the surface, you become stronger.

And even though you will spend your life floating and sinking and struggling and swimming,

Eventually,

You'll become a better swimmer.

You won't panic as you sink, but rather kick and claw your way back to the surface.

Ever more quickly.

Ever more efficiently.

But what if you don't realize you're sinking?

What if you've only ever known of floating?

Would you recognize yourself being pulled beneath the waves?

Would you panic as the water rushed over your face and choked your senses?

Would you, enveloped in the tide, still believe yourself to be floating?

Would you, maybe, begin to question the notion of floating as you slowly descended deeper into the blue abyss?

If you didn't know you were sinking,

Would you swim?

I didn't swim.

I slowly drowned, floating there just beneath the waves.

Where I could still feel the warmth of refracted sunlight upon my face, though I could not reach it.

Ever aware of its presence.

Ever aware of its distance.

And then suddenly, by a firm grasp of my wrist I was dragged -- no, lifted to the surface

And when I broke,

When the sunlight struck my face

And I gasped for breath

I wept

With joy and with anguish

The melody and the harmony that would accompany me for the rest of my life.

I didn't know what it was to sink,

Until I knew what it was to float,

And I will forever swim in the pursuit of the sun.


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