Dear Happiness,

Lately, I feel as if I'm drowning.

I'm drowning in an ocean of my sorrows and regrets, the waves concealing my pleas for help, swallowing me whole and without pause — without so much as the coutousy to give me a fighting chance.

So deep is this ocean that I can't see the sky or light from the sun, as everything I hold dear fades and I sink deeper, my screams bubbling to the surface. I can only hope someone hears them, hears them explode one by one, each louder than the last, but even if they could no one will find me. No one ever looks below the surface, all they see is how beautiful the water meets the horizon. All they see is what is in front of them.

Flailing my arms, I fight to swim and sometimes I can just barely touch the light with my fingertips, feel the warmth I once was bathed in against my skin, but something grabs me. It pulls me out of reach and I'm left breathless, suffocating in this black abyss, my screams nothing more than airless whines. It enters my lungs, my head, chokes me with its hands till my heart might explode.

It numbs me till I can't feel, can't move.

I'm sinking.

Sometimes I can release it, able to breathe for a moment, able to feel again, but all I feel is pain. An intense pain that paints the world around me in red as I sink further into a cloud of my own blood. The red against the empty black somehow relieves me, reminding me that even though im suffocating, I'm still very much alive. I'm breathing. My heart is beating. But it's aching. It's aching so bad and sometimes I feel the pain comes from my chest instead of my arms. Like a knife has been shanked into my heart, but it's not from me. It's from someone who very much looks like me, a darker version of me.

Is that was I look like?

A hollow husk of a person stares at me with blank eyes and pretty lips, whispering words into my ear as they strangle, but also caress me.

“You're worthless.” They say.

“No one loves you.” They repeat, “If they did you wouldn't be drowning. You wouldn't be suffering.”

I fight it. I fight those words, saying they aren't true, and yet the reflection of myself hugs me, embraces me, soothes me until I resist fighting. Until I drift further into the darkness and away from the light.

“They won't save you, but I will. I will.” They say, “Trust me. You're alone. You want this.”

At these words I fall. I fall, hands covering my eyes, shielding me from the light, dragging me deeper, their hands the only comfort I know. Their presence is the only thing I know to be real, the only thing I can see or hear as my existence continues in this tunnel of false interactions and plastered feelings. I see nothing. I feel nothing. I am nothing. This life I live is nothing. And yet, behind these shielded eyes as I become colder until I feel the oceans cold floor against my back, I think of you. I think of the warmth you bring me even at the bottom of this ocean surrounded by nothing except thoughts of loneliness and useless existence. I can hear your voice, I can feel your presence, I feel more than the cold embrace of death's grip as I stand so close to the edge ready to jump.

“You're worth it.” You say.

“I love you.” You repeat, “If I didn't, you would have drowned, but I'm here. You're here. You're not alone. Not anymore.”

And I believe you. I believe you as I tear away the hands that hold me back, looking up at the surface, it's light long gone, but your hand I see reaching through, reaching for me, enduring the darkness and bearing the burdens of this cold with me, to save me. I can't see the surface, I can't see the light, I can't get rid the darkness of my mind — the abyss of this ocean, but I can see you and feel the warmth you bring, enough to give me the strength I need to keep swimming, to keep going, to keep trying to see the light — and maybe, just maybe, I see it. A small sparkle in the far distance where your hand reaches for me. The hand I reach for. The hand I take. The hand that pulls me forward. The hand I love.

Together. Together, we can get through this.