Pressure

I feel the pressure building.

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It doesn’t take long to feel pressure underwater. Just dive down five feet, where the sun doesn’t warm. Cold water prickles your skin, forcing goosebumps as your ears tingle. Another foot, and the tingling becomes searing pain. Watery fingers jab and twist inside your skull.

Your brain begs you to surface, to find equilibrium. But you’ve come this far. The only way up is down. You wrap your fingers around your nose, forcing breath into the crevices behind your eyes. With a pop, the pressure is gone.

You’ve created balance.

I fear pressure, especially from the inside. A squeeze in the chest causes the body to seize. Eyes go wide. Mouth flails like a flounder. Seconds stretch into eternities as the waiting game ensues. Anxiety or something more?

No one expects their body to rebel — to become an over pressurized balloon, swollen arteries pressed until the beating center pops. But it’s not the end that scares me. It’s having a story written all wrong — an ending before a beginning.

If I end tomorrow, you’ll find plastic bits scattered on the ground. Unwitting feet will step over me while observant eyes spot fragments of my soul hidden in the grass.

They’ll know I existed — but only in part. I was just beginning to float, realizing…