There are few survivors who can tell us what it feels like to actually drown. The feeling of drowning, however, is familiar to many.
A drowning person is still conscious, still has some air in their lungs. The process of drowning is a process of enormous struggle, the expenditure of effort, but with the growing realization that the struggle will soon end in disaster, and before too long, there will be no choice but to surrender.
People don’t just drown in water. We drown in debt. We drown in despair. We drown in our own tears.
We can drown on dry land because, contrary to the advice of all the self-help gurus, it’s not enough to just breathe. Human beings are complex creatures, and as much as we need air to breathe, we need to feel a solid emotional ground beneath us, something that won’t give way beneath the weight of our anxieties, something with enough substance of its own to hold us when we wall.
When we are drowning, we have lost the strength to thrash against our surroundings. We have become powerless to maintain our place in the world, with everything that once made us buoyant having drifted away, on the verge of being consumed, with no hope of escape.
Soon enough, we will no longer be left even with the barren consolation of being washed up. We will be lost in the depths, crushed by its weight, destroyed completely.
