Beneath the Surface (A Manifesto)

Most people don’t understand what it’s like to hate life so much that dying seems like the only option. I do. I’ve been drowning my entire life. The blackness of the deep water consumes a little more of me each day. The voices of everyone around me resemble the muffled sounds of boat motors under the water. I scream for help, but nobody is around to hear me. Perhaps they do, but simply don’t care.
        The water pulls me deeper and deeper, pulling me to its unforgiving depths. The surface seems so close that if I reach out, maybe I can touch it. When I do reach out, the surface falls further away. Fish swim around me, oblivious to my looming death, but maybe they don’t care either. I keep going down, and it feels like there is no end to my sinking. I still have a little bit of oxygen left in me, a little bit of fight.
        I kick my legs and paddle my arms, but what good is that when I can no longer tell which way is up? I feel lost. I can feel my body temperature dropping as death threatens to overtake me. I stop fighting because I realize it just isn’t worth the fight, and I am too tired to continue. The pressure builds in my chest as I fight to keep the last thread of air I have left. The salt is burning my eyes. I might be crying, but I can’t tell the difference between my tears and the water of the sea. I wish someone, anyone, would’ve taken notice of me. Maybe then I wouldn’t have given up. Maybe then I would’ve realized that life was worth the fight.
          It’s too late now. . .It’s too late for me.
Maybe I belong in the bottom of the sea/ maybe I am better off down here where nobody will ever find me. The burden my life has created on others can end right here, right now. maybe I need the sea, or it needs me. The sea can fill the emptiness of my being. I feel the water tug at my body one last time, and this time I don’t fight it. This time I let it take me all the way down. I feel the last of my consciousness slip into darkness, and I know, at this very moment, I am gone. I become one with the sea forever.