We are, in the end, only asked to carry every ounce that we can – and then some more. This is somehow supposed to make one feel better. The weight of dreams is evenly distributed – and equally unjust. It is almost as if to revel must include a shared misery. A togetherness that is neither with joy nor desirable.
Neither with joy nor desirable.
So many wrong metaphors for all the right things.
But what more can be asked of one if not that whatever solution that whoever it is that comes up with solutions picks – is equally unbearable. If to drown is the result – and it often is – then at least it will make sense if there is some company along the way. If everyone else is equally grappling with breathing then are you really drowning? Or has drowning just become a natural way of life?
And, if everyone is drowning, then the act of saving oneself can be seen as both selfish and exclusive.
Who, they ask, who are you to undrown?
Who are you to inhale anything else but water.
Even if the benefit of air has been vastly documented. Even if you spent hours and hours of your life trying to explain that air, unlike water, doesn’t choke as often – and doesn’t hurt as much to breath. The hours on end you spent communicating, explaining – re explaining. The hours and hours that you spent meant nothing. Yes, you may have learned the water – but you were born to fly.
Still, you remain attached to the water. The water, having strangled you for so long, was also a way of breathing and a way of being. The water – with no enemies – became an extension of yourself. Your lungs, comfortable in air, but at their best in water. Grasping, searching, looking and trying to extract more from a resource that gives so little.
A resource that gives so little.
You sigh, reach for all your hands can carry, and dive.
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