Without having lived

He looked up with eyes wide as the sky blurred in the ripples on the surface. The dying evening light seemed bright compared to the darkness that approached from behind. His arms extended out and forwards from his body as if reeling in slow motion from a blow to the chest, except instead of backwards, he was knocked downwards. He was calm. He had given up. He had resigned from his life.

Just moments before he had struggled with all his body could muster, beaten with his fists and clawed with his fingers in a vain attempt to grasp what was impossible to hold. He screamed but all that came was muted gurgling.

He had travelled too far, gone out of his depth into a place where his skills were grossly inadequate. His confidence held had been replaced with immediate fear but now, that too had subsided to the point of nothing. Now, all that remained was a feeling of surrender, of serenity.

It was here that he realised that there was nothing to fear, even though he knew not what would come when the sky above would be bright no more. In those final seconds he had accepted his life, accepted that it would end. Once acceptance had set in, it was then he knew it would be okay for, there was nothing else it could be.

Imagine the headlines: Boy drowns on his 8th birthday

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That boy was me yet here I am to write this now, as in the final moments of resignation, a fifteen year old jumped in to save me. I remember him pumping my chest to get the water out. He knew what he was doing as he was trained, the son of the owner of the swimming complex, friend's of the family.

We were there to celebrate mine and my brother @galenkp's birthday. The rest of the family were in another pool playing and I had just learned to swim in a shallow kid's pool and had decided I was ready for something larger. When I became fully conscious again and after I regurgitated the water in my lungs, I said to the boy, "Don't tell my mum." My fear of her scolding was greater than that of death it seems.

But, in those minutes I faced death for the second time in my life that I can remember. There have been several since but it was in the mind of an eight year old I concluded that death is not something to fear, it is something to accept and when it is time, when all the fight is gone, something to surrender into.

But, only when the fight is gone, only when you are certain that there is no other way to survive, no other way through. Up until that point for me, it will be tooth and nail as long as it is only me that will take the punishment.

It is because of this event amongst the others that I know I do not fear death and, I know I want to live. My biggest fear is to close my eyes, sink in to the darkness knowing I hadn't fought my all. I fear dying without having fully lived.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]