I'm drowning.
Sinking deeper and deeper into a black and murky water.
I am alone.
I am stuck.

I try to swim up, not because I want to, but because I must.
I must keep swimming,
Because there are people on land that need me, that want me, that demand me to live and breathe and strive for better things.

Sometimes I wonder if I want to live and breathe and strive for better things.

It'd be so much easier to just let go,
And give in to the black and murky waves,
To simply accept that I'll never again be a person on the shore.

I'm still splashing at the waves, now with a rising panic,
And I can hear my heart pounding,
And I can feel the blood rushing to my head with the intensity of a freight train.

Because now the waves in the once placid waters have jagged edges,
Razor edges that draw blood,
And I see the black and murky waters turn red with my life force.

And the rational part of my brain recognizes that none of this is real,
That my wounds and the water and my panic are a figment of my troubled mind.

But my heart knows with a sickening certainty that even if I do not die today,
I will forever carry the burden of scars from wounds that never really happened.