I’ve never touched the ocean, but I might as well be lost at sea. The ground my feet was planted on has somehow slipped away. My hair is dry, yet my mind is saturated with a flood of thoughts and emotions that came upon me like a raging storm and there is no escape, no shelter, nothing but dark clouds as far as I can comprehend. I swim as hard as I can, trying to get through this moment, this day, this wave. I take a deep breath as the waves roll over me and I get pulled under. The pressure crushes me, the darkness envelopes me, as I descend with a struggle, fighting to reach the surface again.

I am suspended in time and space as everything appears to move in slow motion. I can’t breathe in. I can’t exhale. I can’t move; there is not forward or backward, no north or south, no GPS to tell me where to go and how to get where I need to be. Just as my mind screams that “I AM GOING TO DIE HERE”, the wave relents and gives me up so that I can break through the surface of this pain and for a moment I can …just …breathe.