To the bravest swimmer I know

Well, aren’t you quite a soul?

Look at you go. At the young age of twelve, you have already realized that being alone is not the same as being lonely. You have found solace in solitude and you take pride in it. It is not that you have fully detached yourself from others; you merely know that there are times wherein you have to brace the waves alone. You have swum against the raging currents by yourself and that made your fortitude incomparable.

You know yourself more than anyone. For you, that is power. It is your firm belief that you cannot love which you do not know, so you took your time evaluating yourself, exploring every detail there is to discern. Slowly, you have learned to value yourself — a feat rarely accomplished.

Perhaps that is why you’ve always felt iffy with the very concept of depression. Clinical or otherwise, the idea of a debilitating sadness that drowns people is foreign to you, an experienced swimmer who thought that every ripple is penetrable if you try hard enough. You try to be more empathetic but you cannot deny this nagging feeling every time you encounter such a curious case. A small, reticent part of you perceives it as a weakness. If you’re going to be more unrelenting, you might even go as far as regarding it as laziness. You believe that there is always a cure as long as one is committed to pursuing it.

Five years from now, you will see for yourself that there is no cure. I know, I know. It might seem inconceivable to you that such a problem can exist without having a solution. That, however, is the cold hard truth that will slap you in the face one day.

You see, there will come a time wherein you will cease to love yourself. You will question everything you know about yourself and the answers to your queries will elude you. You will doubt your worth. You will doubt your heart and wonder whether you truly possess one. There will be times wherein you have to remind yourself to breathe in order to keep going. Breathing will suddenly become a chore — and so does living.

The writer in you will start writing verses using carelessly drawn lines and streaks. The artist in you will learn to draw red whenever you feel blue. You will realize that a part of you has already died and nothing can ever resuscitate it back to life. One day, your soul will sink to the bottom of the ocean, and you will wonder whether you should try to swim your way up or let yourself drown.

This letter is not meant to scare you. It is not even meant to change how things will unfold. It is more for me, to be honest. Your eighteen-year-old self, that is. It serves as a stark reminder of the person that I used to be and how glaring the difference is from the person that I am now.

But don’t worry, your eighteen-year-old self is trying. I may have lost my ability to swim, but is it not a marvel in itself to see a person paralyzed with fear and woe somehow flail her way into survival?

Look at me go. No, look at us go. The ocean is vast and deep and deadly scary, but we’re here, in the midst of it. We’re still here.

In a way, aren’t we quite a soul?