Do you ever feel like screaming at the top of your lungs?

Do you ever feel like screaming at the top of your lungs? Until your throat is hoarse and achey. Until there is no sound escaping your body, yet your brain continues on.

Your voice may evade you but your mind continues belting.

You scream until everyone and everything knows your pain.

—

I screamed today.

At the top of my lungs until nothing else left my body.

I feel like I’ve been gasping for air, treading far below the surface and bobbing overhead at the very last possible moment.

Yes, I’m alive. I’m still breathing.

But for how long?

How long do I remain above the surface you may ask. Just long enough, to hiss one breath of air into my lungs to feed my brain and extremities.

To keep them alive.

To keep me alive.

Then I am yanked below once again. Unable to breathe and find my way back to the surface.

I’m shrouded in kelp, debris, and darkness. With short glimpses of sunlight peaking through.

I swim toward that glistening ray of light and when I’m near, it disappears.

It’s gone.

I lose hope once again and am engulfed in the darkness.

Unable to find my way.

I flail in confusion until my limps go numb and my eyelids close.

There, there it is.

There I see the light.

The light I had been searching for.