Swimming

   The light seemed to be far away, moving far from my fingers each time I moved my arms. The space I was in seemed very open and, for a moment, I felt that would be the feeling of being floating in space, without a proper astronaut suit of course. I have no idea why I thought that at that moment. Isn’t the brain supposed to prioritize things in our bodies in order to make us live longer? However, I could almost see the ship I had come out too, floating silently in front of me, and a big planet below me. But all that didn’t matter because I was about to die.

 The thought lasted just a second but it was strong enough for me to move faster, to force my tired arms to do a little bit more work. Every single vein and nerve in my body was crying in pain, my brain hurt so much I couldn’t stand it. I had always wished to be taller in order to have bigger arms and feet, which would have helped so much in that moment. But I wasn’t.  I was just the opposite of that and I was in a position where wishing was useless.

 My last movements towards the light were desperate. It was then when my body felt like it was empty. Every single thing that had no real use, every function that didn’t serve a purpose in that moment, they all disappeared in order to focus on the fact that I was going to die if my body didn’t perform something close to a miracle. Because I had never done what I about to do. It was a triumph I would never really be aware of and that’s ok because it worked.

 It was my right hand, my main hand if you will, the first limb of my body to feel the air outside. It felt terribly cold, colder that the water in the lagoon. The air seemed to be against me too but the difference was I could breathe that. The water was different, invasive and dangerous. Before and after that, I could never understand the people that are fascinated with water and would like to spend their lives in it.

 I guess that makes me a hypocrite. Because I kind of was one of those people before that. Since the earliest age, my parents took me to the ocean, to swimming pools, lake or wherever I could swim. I took classes and even competed for prizes when I was in school. Modesty aside, I won several of those competitions because I had a serious passion about the water, about how my body moved in it and it felt like home.

 The hard time would be during my teenage years when, for reasons I shouldn’t address, I became increasingly larger in size. And it was nature doing its job; it was more like junk food and sugar doing their thing. It was then when I got depressed for the very first time. Self diagnosed, of course. I never went to any doctor or shrink to tell me how I felt. Even at that age I found the concept ridiculous.

 Of course, I stopped my swimming. I was too big for the bathing suit and too sad to move my arms that fast. It was like that for years and I had to put away any remainder of who I had been before because it hurt too hard. Somehow, I had become a disappointment for myself. Is there anything more pathetic than that? I have no idea. The point is my attention shifted from one thing to the next. You can blame puberty for that. I just had to survive high school so, as when I swam, my body had to get its priorities straight.

 It was only in my last years of college, more than ten years after I had dropped out of the swim team in school, that I came back to the water. It’s amazing to think about it, but in that time I never really swam. Yes, I went to the beach or to houses with pools. But I would only be in the water for a moment, if at all. Maybe surprising but true. I felt I didn’t belong there anymore so why overstay my welcome?

 Aged twenty-three years old, I discovered a gym close to my house that had a swimming pool. The best part was you could reserve one of the swimming lanes for an hour and didn’t put anyone to tell you how to do anything. It was absolutely free of that. So I decided to go and, at first, I felt as drowned as in the lagoon. But I decided I would not ask for help and, slowly, it all came back to me.

 After my first week, the people that worked there congratulated me for my style, my technique. Although one of them reminded me, as if I didn’t know, that I was too short and that could be a problem. I know what he meant: being short in a pool is a problem because you take longer to reach the other side, even if it is by a few centimeters. Those can be decisive in a competition and they were certainly decisive in the lagoon. If I had been taller, the sense of terror would have been less powerful.

 When I had two arms outside of the water, the only thing I could do was taking a big breath. I felt alive, although barely. My legs hurt so much but they kept on moving until I reached the shore, which was obscured by the shadow caster over by the rocky structure above the lagoon. It was like a vault that enclosed the whole system. Why would I ever think it was a good idea to swim in a flooded cave?

 But as the soon got higher in the sky, the place seemed to get larger and the water revealed itself as so transparent and perfect. The sky was evenly reflected on its surface. It was so well done, the surface of the water, that had calmed down fast after I had gotten out of it, seemed like a huge mirror where God could check himself out.

 I lay down in my back, conscious I would have to swim back to the exit. Before I got comfortable, I checked for animals, bugs and others. After all, it was an arid place and little animals are known to live through the cracks of rocks and such. But when I was down, looking at the sky through the opening before me, I realized that was, again, my first time swimming in a very long time.

 The pool in the gymnasium was great. After some time, I got a proper job wearing a tie and a suit, which I’ve always hated, so I had to move my swimming hours to a later time. I would go the moment work finished, around six or seven in the afternoon. I would stay there for an hour, not stopping for more that a few seconds. I got new fans, new people that told me they were really surprised by me. I can’t tell you how much I loved that attention, which I had never gotten for anything else.

 However, I caught the eye of one particular person and from then on, I only cared about his comments and his smiles. I had learned not to let opportunities go by, so after a week of random looks, I decided to approach him after I was done swimming. It was weird because it was in the locker room, where people grabbed their stuff to have a shower or changed their clothes. He was wearing his bathing suit, like me, when I asked him if he would like to have a drink in a bar close to there.

 That was our first date. We considered it our first date a year later, when we celebrated the anniversary of our relationship. We didn’t really celebrate, we just got together and did the things we both like: we went swimming to a beautiful lake, we had a picnic with many delicious things to eat and we kissed and made love in my car, which was incredibly comfortable for such a vehicle.

 Our relationship lasted for almost three years. One month shy of our relationship turning three years old, he was assaulted in the street by some guy that wanted to steal his money. The guy had a gun and shot him with it, once. The bullet hit his spine. We all got to the hospital in time to say a few words. Then, he was gone. As if he had never existed. We had so many plans, a life of plans. This city is crazy.

 I came to the desert because of what happened. I needed to escape from everyone and everything. I still think about him, date and night. I cry for him and I also have wet dreams with him. But it’s in the water I feel him the most. I guess that’s why I challenged myself to swim through the flooded cave. And that’s why I’m challenging myself to go back. For him but also for me. I need to feel alive again.

Own poison

   I’m empty.  Have you ever felt, at least for a moment, that there’s no more gasoline inside of you? What I mean is, sometimes we just run out. We stop and there’s nothing to keep us going, at least for that very moment. And it feels eternal, like years and years could be put inside a small grain of sand and relived in a single breath. Everything seems still and it’s maddening because the human body, the human soul is not built for such hardship. We are made to be and to move and if we stop we just go insane.

 I did go insane for a little while. I felt the world crumbling around me, cracks opening on the floor and darkness in front of me. In that moment, there’s only you and no one else. Your friends, your family, they do not matter because you fall hard and deep into oblivion where no one could ever find you. And then that darkness penetrates your heart and makes you scream in terror without even opening your mouth. It is the feeling of real pain, of universal rendition to the darkest feelings and situations that the human heart can go through. In that moment, we are lost.

 But it always ends. Or at least for me, it has always ended. The light comes back and the back seems the same although I feel particularly changed inside. The feeling might be compared to the one you feel when riding a rollercoaster but blind and even deaf. That’s what it feels to fall into you and to get lost for the fraction of a second. When you come back, nothing really has happened outside your mind but you know it did happen inside. And then, like a poison, madness settles in. It slowly contaminates the brain, working for years, slowly. This poison has no real antidote but it can be stopped, maybe not forever but at least for enough time to build a stronger armor to defend your mind.

 Isn’t it amazing? We wage wars against each other, killing so many of our fellow men ad women and in the end of it all, our own brains can be our most vicious enemies, tearing us apart from the inside out. What good does it make to live your life dodging bullets and dangers, when maybe the thing that will take your life away from you is just growing freely inside, deep in your brain. We take everything, even the fact that we are just flesh and bone, for granted. We do not realize that there’s nothing that makes us really strong in front of the many dangers we might be forced to encounter in our lives.

 And it the world today, the younger brains, the ones least trained in the arts of fighting oneself, are those who are more likely to succumb to the evilness inside our brains. We all have it inside, there’s no one who doesn’t rot like that. The difference is that some people have received that click, that activation code that makes us realize the threat inside. And it passes so many times when we are young, when we are supposed to be living so many things and learning and enjoying life. That is because we are absorbing so much that we cannot control what enters our brain. And then, the poison begins contaminating the mind and in some youngsters, it happens so fast, with so much fierceness, that when others notice it it’s simply too late.

 Many people talk nowadays about the terrible cancer that extinguishes people in a heartbeat. AIDS does the same, consuming people fast. But there’s not that same awareness or interest in the mental issues of the human body. Our most appreciated tool, our brain, is also weak. No matter how hard the skull or how trained the mind is, the brain can also be affected and we are one of the biggest threats to it.

 The world today is the reason. We have to be so many things at the same time and do some others to be and be to be accepted because that is supposed to give all the peace we need. But that is a lie because we are never really accepted except by some individuals. Isn’t it strange that people what acceptance by everyone and they decide to ignore the fact that they will only know a small portion of the humans inhabiting this world in their lifetime? And even if they could meet everyone in the world, those others humans also do and think and are in order to be someone in this tiny grain of rock in space.

 We do not realize that we are competing, and hard, for the exact same prize, which happens to be non-existent. Because no one is never accepted, no even by all the people they know. And we all do that; we all do and say things to benefit ourselves, to keep moving, to be noticed and appreciated. Even if our main goal seems to be another, we are always looking for acceptance. Many have love as a goal and what is love but the acceptance, by someone else, of you as their chosen romantic interest? And if your goal is to have a job, you have to woo certain people to get it, by working hard or through any other means.

 It all comes down to people liking you, of that sick obsession with everyone needing and wanting you to be there by their side. And obsession that has its root in the past, when our species felt it needed to unite or it would face extinction. We are now many millions and still we think we need to be all on top of each other. That’s why countries always meddle in the problems of other countries: not only they need to show their power but also because they are desperate for allies and friends and companions. As if we weren’t already just by being born in this world. We do not need acceptance but a simple reality check to tell us how exactly alike we all are. No one better, no one worse. No one nothing. We are all the same thing which is, by the end of the day, not that much.

 When I feel empty, I feel like I cannot breath, as if the world was all around me, pressing me from every corner trying to make me explode. Once, the poison reached a point in my brain where I collapsed and was in the mercy of my most basic instincts. I attempted to destroy myself and felt liberated when I felt I had succeeded. There’s no feeling in the world like blood running down your forehead. You know why? Because you feel alive. Isn’t that sick?

 It is. If the only way to feel, to be able to communicate is to smash your head against a wall, something has to be very wrong. “Talk to your family”. That’s the advice I followed and it helped. Not because they said something really useful but because I realized I couldn’t go forward with the plans that the poison had for me. I just couldn’t sacrifice what I am and put them on the way. I stopped and held back from ending it all. And I didn’t do it for me. I understood things have more consequences than we realize. Sometimes we are so driven by what’s inside us, that we just don’t see what is happening around us. But I did.

 People would love me to say that I stopped for me, because I had some kind of revelation and just realized how much worse the world would get without me. But that would be a lie because the world wouldn’t realize I was gone, only a fraction of it would. And I stopped for that fraction and for nothing else. If it had been for the world, solely for that, I would have gone through with it. But I didn’t and here we are.

 I’m not strong. You don’t really require strength to stop the poison inside your head; you only need time and distractions. Because of you’re having a great time, it all seems to happen too fast. Have you ever noticed that? The poison hasn’t. And the idea is that when you die, the poison is there, contained because it had been distracted for years and years. That’s all you need. Again, you just need to do. Just do.

 That’s what I’m doing, trying to keep the thoughts, the sounds, the feelings, all at bay. I write because I like to do it, it’s true. And because it’s the only thing I feel I do well. But mostly, and many people do not know this, I do it to keep everything from touching me too close. I’ve been successful for the most part of the recent months with a couple of incidents where I just had to take a breath and relax, in order to not let anything inside win any ground.

 One of my weaknesses is when people say to many nice things to me. I mean, they are nice and gentle and even if they don’t really know me that well, I thank them. But when they happen too often I feel they are lies and they start hurting bad, like huge burns. And then the poison starts moving and I decide to chop every arm, every single thing that may let it move more, even if I have to sacrifice some things many others would appreciate.

 It was long ago that I decided not to have any romance in my life, at least none for real. Because I discovered that was the easiest way to let the poison, to let me, kill myself.

Stop

Work, work, work. Break. Some coffee, by the window. Work, work, work. Another coffee, now walking to someone else's office. Work, work, work. Lunch time.

This is it. His time has come to opt out of everything he has always seen as he's life. This is no life.

Instead of eating with the same person he has always done so for the last 3 years, this man decides to go home and pack.

Where to go? Not important. But life's grip is tightening to much and he cannot keep fighting it.

Some shirts, couple of pants, two pairs of shoes and some underwear. That should be enough. He takes his passport, in the eventuality of traveling abroad. There are no real plans about where to go but that's precisely the idea.

He checks his phone: no calls, no messages, nothing. Better, he thinks, if they believe he's running late or has had some kind of problem.

Takes the backpack and walks to the door. After closing properly, he pushes the elevator's button and then a woman, older than him but still beautiful, stands closely. Her hair is messy, she even appears to be missing a day or two of careful grooming.

He looks at her big running pants and old shirt. There appears to be a lot of dust on her shoulders.

- It's taking quite long. - she says.

- Yeah... - he answers, no idea what's she's talking about.

No, he doesn't like to chat with strangers. But she does.

- You live here? - she asks.

- Leaving for some weeks.

Why he answered that, he has no idea. He's starting to sweat.

- I'm moving in. So weird to move from another city.

- Must be.

He really doesn't want to talk.

- Am I making you uncomfortable? - she asks, looking at him.

He cleans  some of the sweat off his forehead. He decides not to say a word.

- Sorry, I tend to over talk. Guess I'm nervous for the new job and everything.

Then something clicks inside his mind, like a key entering the keyhole.

He turns to her, watching her honey colored eyes and says:

- Don't you get fucking trapped by that job, ok?

He's dead serious. She knows it.

- Never become a zombie like they want you to be. Think for yourself, even if they don't give a fuck about it.

- Ok.

He falls silent.

She suddenly says he has remembered something at home and leaves, without saying a word.

The elevator arrives. He comes in and tightens the backpack.

As the door closes, he faintly smiles, rising his head, finally feeling as a real free man.