Like a siren to the sailor, it calls to me. Drawing me towards its depths, towards its vastness. Within it is an eerie stillness that I can’t help but find peaceful, an unknown I can’t help but find safe, an emptiness I find comforting. Beneath the clear surface is a beauty that tempts me with its secrets. So much lost to time, left waiting to be found beneath the shimmering ripples. I stare into this other place, sitting with this contemplation, my will to resist pushing and pulling like the tide. Even as I weigh the choice, I feel at rest, I feel calm. But most of all I feel closer to freedom than I’ve ever felt before. It’s one step away, one dive, one fall, to become one with the water. I see that freedom in the reflection that stares back at me, amplifying my urge to give in. It seems this is where I belong.

Where in place of quiet stillness I find clashing currents and angry waves, chaos is not found, but in its place I see great power. Power I wish I had, power I wish I possessed the strength to wield. That same power would destroy me in an instant if I dare to think myself worthy of venturing too close, even just for a glimpse. I should be wary, be cautious, but this knowledge only pushes me closer to the shore, emboldens me to be reckless; for in my final moments of weakness, perhaps I will truly know strength. I fear myself mad. What other explanation could there be to explain yearning for my own undoing? To explain this endless desire to cease? To wade into the depths and disappear, becoming one of its many mysteries? 

I do not know if I am strong or weak for fighting this impulse. If I have been fearless or afraid as I shielded my ears from the siren’s song, closed my eyes and banished the dreamy reflection that made me believe there is a place where things are better than this. If it was an act of bravery or cowardice to approach the shore, bracing for the sharp sting of ice at my feet before being swept into the warm embrace of the waves. I will never know, and I am not sure I would want to. For I have chosen to join the beauties lost to time in the sea.

...

Maintaining my mental health has always been an uphill battle. There are highs and lows, periods where it feels more manageable and periods where it feels like I’m losing my grip on reality. The last two years have been the hardest of my life and pushed me to the absolute edge of sanity. For a short while, I shifted from being passively suicidal to actively suicidal and one night last spring was almost my last. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to die, but that I no longer wanted to exist. I wanted to be somewhere else, a place not here. This desire grew stronger and these thoughts more frequent as my mental state deteriorated under the combination of stress and pressure from trauma old and new.

This piece is a confrontation of those feelings as I feel them resurfacing once more, and an acknowledgement to the part of myself that actively wants to stop fighting, to step into the sea and be swept away by the tide. Through these images, I am exploring the drastic shifts in my mental perception as well as conceptually indulging the intrusive thoughts that linger in the dark.