At first,
I thought I was drowning.
Arms wild,
lungs burning,
heart panicking
at the weight of it all.
I fought the water—
kicked against it,
pushed,
thrashed
like survival meant
winning.
But water doesn’t fight back.
It just holds you
or lets you sink.
No one told me
how much of this
was learning to stop
fighting what I’m in.
So I slowed.
Not all at once—
just enough
to notice
that the surface
was closer
than I thought.
That if I leaned back
instead of forward,
if I trusted
even a little—
I wouldn’t disappear.
I wouldn’t fall
through the bottom
of something
that doesn’t have one.
I’d float.
Awkward at first.
Unsteady.
Unsure
if I could trust it to last.
But it held me.
And maybe
that’s what this is—
not learning
how to escape the water,
but learning
how to stay in it
without losing myself.
Learning
that survival
doesn’t always look like struggle.
Sometimes
it looks like surrender—
like letting something
carry you
until you remember
how to move
without fear.
Through the Fog 