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Don't You Know Drowning Is a Pleasure

Seeing the Shooting Stars

By Lake StarrPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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The Lake

I used to love swimming, and I mean really love it. Whenever I was stressed, I would imagine how it would feel to go to the lake and dive beneath that crystalline surface. The sudden cold embrace that felt so tight I couldn't breath for a second, the cleansing water that swept the day’s dirt and woes to the bottom of the pool, washing it all from my self... The lake was rather large, so large that it was my personal challenge to reach the other side, a feat I thought I could only achieve if I tried my hardest. Swimming to the point of pain and exhaustion so intense that I knew it would be echoing into the next day.

I would go every day after school. Before going inside I’d flee to the lake shore, hurriedly change and wade out until my head dipped beneath the surface. I wouldn’t dive into the water when it was waist deep, I would walk along the bottom, breathing out as I went deeper so I would sink, walking until my head was enveloped by the rush of murk. I always waited for as long as I could once I was completely submerged, to see how long I could wait in silence beneath the ripples. I would wait long enough that tiny flashes would appear behind my eyelids; I knew it was just my brain panicking, but I would try to stay calm and see the flashes for the shooting stars they were.

Only when I felt I could physically wait no longer would I break to the surface, breathing in deeply the warm air, and cursing my self silently for losing the stars I’d seen. My grief at losing my linen dark world was deep, not quite a heartbreak kind of loss, but sweet in knowing I’d have my world again tomorrow. Only then would I begin to try to make it across the lake, my arms gliding in and out of the water, my feet always kicking at the nothingness below my stomach. I’d always turn around to make my way back, though. Every time I had some reserve left in me, some last ember to get back to shore on. Some part of me always despised this about myself, that every time I would admit defeat against nothing, but my own failure to go far enough.

One day though, I gave up that ember, tried to go all the way. I put everything on the line.

I don’t like swimming anymore.

I turned from an angel singing its way across the sky to a snake, slowly trying to escape from the quicksand beneath it. I don’t remember a lot. I was swimming and then my muscles began to spasm, tremble beneath their own weight as I tried to keep going. The worst part is I have no idea how I ended up on shore. What I do remember is being at the bottom of the lake, my feet in the mud, and the stars shooting across the bottom of the lake. Only this time I saw them with my eyes wide open, and it was so dark. The darkness was shot through with rays from a soft light above, but beyond this there was only me in the dark with the dancing lights. I loved the bottom of the lake, more my home. I wanted, needed to stay in the dark with those stars. I was finally somewhere I wanted to be, somewhere I thought would embrace me. I closed my eyes, ready to finally sleep, happy and safe. I thought drowning would be a key, the way past the barrier between me and them. I breathed in the water, finally at one with what I saw.

Then I was on the shore. No stars, no mud, just water in my lungs that kept coming out like vomit, and this new sadness.

I used to love swimming, dipping in and out of the dark world in my lake. But then when I tried to join that world, it rejected me. I had been so close to staying with the lights, I know it. And they spat me out like garbage. All I could think when back on that shore was that I wouldn’t ever see the stars again, and then I cried. I couldn’t leave my world and join the lake and if I couldn’t be in the lake what was the point? All I could do was cry. I had been sentenced to life on land, and I could never escape.

I don’t remember what it was like to breathe in the water, but I know that on land all I can do is gasp.

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