Sinking
You are sinking into a hole.
You may not realize it, but you are sinking even now. Slow-moving quicksand that is so lethargic it becomes a joke, but it is a joke without humour.
For this slow-moving quicksand, so funny in its name it becomes unfunny, is dragging you down into a hole, and no one knows where that hole ends up. No one knows what is on the other side of that pit, and no one wants to find out because they’re all too scared to know the truth - and if they find out, they might not come back.
You are sinking into a hole.
The slow-moving quicksand sticks to your toes and the sun bakes on your back, but you feel cold inside. You feel empty inside. Like everything’s been leeched out of you; like colour has lost its meaning and words have lost their purpose. Words become butterflies and you watch them fly away without a thought towards you, but you can’t tell whether they’re blue or yellow or every colour of the rainbow.
You live in a world of old photography sepia, and sound mutes in your ears as if you jammed in earplugs, like the kind you get when you go on a Hercules for the first time and the pilot tells you ‘put these on, put these on quick - you’ll hurt if you don’t’.
You are sinking into a hole.
You are sinking but you can’t even tell, because you are always walking against the pull of the pit. You are walking upwards as it drags you down, and it is almost as if you are on a treadmill. Or maybe on an escalator, but you are trying to walk up while the escalator forces you to go down, and so you are stuck in the middle.
You wonder why you try to go against the pull of the hole, sometimes. You look up at a sky that’s so bright blue it’s colourless, and you wonder if it’s even worth it. If it’s even worth remembering what colour looks like - even worth chasing butterfly dreams.
You are sinking into a hole.
And you feel so alone, but you are not alone. Look to your left, to your right, forwards and backwards and all around you. There are hundreds and thousands of others just like you, walking against the pull, like salmon in the river; swimming upstream despite it seeming impossible.
They are walking, pushing themselves forward, and each step ahead that they take prompts you to take a step ahead, for if you stop you’ll fall back into them and cause them to collapse, dragging them into the hole with you. That’s not fair at all, and so you think ‘I have to keep going, just a little longer, I have to keep going’.
You are sinking into a hole.
Sometimes the others around you exhaust themselves and they become so tired and so scared of everything around them that they give up, and they stop walking. Sometimes they crash into those around you, hindering their progress, avoiding their hands when they reach out to touch them - to grab them. Sometimes they slip between the others’ legs and fall into the hole, leaving behind a gap where they once were.
No one moves to fill in the gap, and you are reminded of the lost ones every time you look around. The gaps dot the crowds around you, and you see the way others’ eyes are drawn to the spots just like yours; you see their sadness, their questions, wondering what they could have done to inspire that person to keep walking.
You are sinking into a hole.
You are sinking and everything seems tough and you just want to stop. You say so out loud; you say ‘I’m so tired’ and ‘I hate this’ and ‘I hate me’ and you get ready to stop. Nothing can stop you from stopping, no one can reach you and touch you and push you forwards.
But then you hear the person behind you, see the people beside you reaching out, and you automatically reach out to grab their hands. They squeeze your fingers and the person behind you reaches out and out until they can push your back, and you realize that these people have surrounded you for a reason. They have surrounded you for a purpose.
You are sinking into a hole.
But your friends are sinking with you. They will sink with you for as long as you let them.
And that makes everything a little bit easier for a while.