Life Support

"When the real hold you down you 'sposed to drown, right?"-Drowning, Mick Jenkins

I gave myself a little time to write this one, wanted to allow myself to replay the day over and over again. I stumbled upon a recent (well not recent, but more visible) development of my emotions that will be explored later because, quite frankly, I don't like writing in the present tense as maybe you've noticed. It was Saturday. I had gone thrift shopping, beat my face, and had adorned my skin in my sexiest outfit. I felt good, so it was only fair I looked the part as well. I was supposed to go see a psychic for a reading. Cecelia. You will later learn why on a scale of 1-Not Shit, Cecelia is not a one. During my thrift shopping, I came across a swimsuit I'd been looking at all summer in the store window. Brown with large pearls dangling from the front adjustment straps. I cannot swim and decided during a 2013 suicide attempt, drowning is not the way I want to go. Still, this summer I took my first visit to a large body of water [to learn to swim]. Orange Creek. I went with my best friend and the most success we had in me learning to swim was doing poorly executed floating. Regardless, the water was only deep enough for me to still be able to stand straight up in and while I felt dizzy wading through it, I enjoyed the experience and knew I'd want to do it again. Saturday made my second visit to Orange Creek. New swimsuit clinging to my curves, the anxiety I'd felt all week followed me down the little hill to the water. Here's where Cecelia comes in. Roughly an hour after calling to ask the price of her services and politely declining an appointment after learning knowledge of the future would cost me $55.00 out of a $109.00 check, I almost drowned. This is not an exaggeration. The current was stronger than last time. I wasn't using my hands to help get through because I was holding on to our shoes. Ironically, all this caused me to lose my footing. Balance unintact, things escalated from a playful "Oh shit!" to a terrified I'll-never-see-my-mom-again "OH SHIT!" The only thing that helped me (I was out of my best friend's reach) was being pushed toward some low hanging branch that I grabbed and held onto until I was certain I hadn't died. My best friend swam to me, I got on his back and was walked to a little sandy piece of land where I cried hysterically for five minutes straight before saying, "If the damn psychic hadn't been so expensive, we could've seen this coming." Five more minutes was spent laughing at that and afterwards, I had the photo shoot I'd anticipated before my face had hit the water. Fifteen minutes after nearly being taken out the game, Instagram got to see my summer body, my wet curls, my unbothered grin. Not my trepidation, my literal fight for my life, and my panic. I wish I could say I had this huge epiphany, that I live every moment like it's my last and that I believe I'm invincible. The truth? Now when things feel awful, all I think is, "This is still better than drowning" and I begin to feel better. That's it. The picture I posted fifteen minutes after almost drowning has 83 likes currently. Let's say Mother Nature hadn't extended a hand and my best friend didn't get to me in time. That's 83 people that, while I had died, would've been playing Xbox or working or listening to music. Rolling a blunt, eating some pizza, having sex. Those 83 people wouldn't have known until perhaps hours later that I was gone. What would they have said? Would they had missed me? Would they blame my best friend? Travelled down for my funeral? Had massive regret all I'd left behind was an unpublished poetry book and a fake diamond ring? These are the questions that have played in my head every day since the incident and while they're menial and impossible to answer honestly because they're hypothetical, they've convinced me to have slightly more regard for my existence.