My responsibilities feel like a wave crashing down over my head and engulfing my helpless body.

 The first wave hurls over my head, filled with disease. The second wave crashes on top of the first, that one is filled with bills. 

Taking a quick glance at its victim, me. Before it sucked me under the current. I can feel my body getting thrown from side to side as the continuous crashing of the waves created a whirlpool beneath me. I try to dig my toes in the sand to gain stability. The sand was only a temporary solution, as it slipped away from the creases between my toes. 

My eyes burn as I frantically try to catch a glimpse of light above me. The sun glistened on the surface of the water, a thin barrier that separated me from reality. At that point I was getting light headed, failing to remember that this is real. My lungs were consumed with the warm salt water as I used the last of my energy to scream for help. It didn’t help, it never does. I just choked on my words as the waves kept crashing.

 My body is physically tired but my mind is still working. 

The little voice in my head keeps saying, ‘get up, get up, get up’. I want to give up, not get up. 

It seemed like a simple thought, letting the water take my lifeless body out to sea. 

There is a part of me that is stronger than I had initially thought. I pushed my body towards the light. After what seemed to be hours of drowning, my body broke through the layer that separates my responsibilities from my peace. 

As I breathed in the warm salty air the waves grew calm. The thin layer of water became still, moving only in unison to my body. The warm liquid brushed swiftly along my skin, as it wrapped me gently in a cocoon. 

If I had to say, I am doing OK. There’s days where I am suffocated with waves of responsibilities but after the storm there’s always a rainbow. 

-Isabella Heckmann