Drowning Is Silent

Drowning is silent. There are no frantic splashes. No cries for help. There is only the weight of your body. The waves crashing over your head. The current tugging you to the depths. You grow too tired to fight. Your lungs have no air to waste on crying out. Instead you focus on that tiny little gulp you can take between the waves. You try to ignore the exhaustion settling into your bones. You know that the waves will not let you float at the surface, and if you cease fighting, then you'll be pulled so far from shore that you may never see it again.

Drowning is silent. Not all drowning pertains to water.

This week, I learned that my cousin was drowning. That she has been for quite some time. And I didn't know because she had no air to warn me. No energy left to wave me in her direction. And I simply didn't take the time to look.

It's a sickening feeling, knowing that you have someone you love who's in a fragile mental state, and you didn't notice when the cracks grew larger. It's even worse knowing that your own selfishness allowed for those cracks to form in the first place.

As traumatic as this all sounds, my cousin is very much alive. Her will to live may not be. Her sanity is most definitely still struggling. And it's all because my family scattered to the wind and left it to her to take on the duty and burden of being the sole caregiver of our elderly grandfather.

I'd like to go into more detail, but I just can't. And if it's exhausting for me to think about, I'm sure you can imagine just how defeating it is to have put your life on hold for three years to do it.

Could not be me. Could. Not.

I'm going to have to do better by her, but I do think I've just seen my Papa for the last time this weekend. If they don't get him in a place where he's forced to comply with medications and food, then I don't see him lasting long. Maybe I'm wrong. For his sake, I hope I'm not. He doesn't want this life anymore, and he deserves a rest. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

As for me, I'm going to see about throwing my cousin a life preserver every now and again. And maybe when this does pass, we can get her aboard a boat heading for a brighter horizon.