The Daily Struggle

Joey is in a sailboat with his friend and family, rowing with his face turned to the wind. The boat starts slowing and eventually, comes to a standstill. “It’s my fault.” Joey rows harder but to no avail. His friend comes over but he doesn’t let them bother with the chores. “No man, you enjoy the lake. Beautiful, isn’t it?” His family takes a snack break but he doesn’t join them, believing he doesn’t deserve it what with bringing them all on this good-for-nothing trip. He blames himself for not being able to row harder. His muscles burn like the fire that burns so hot it feels icy to the touch due to sensory overload. He drops the oar because of course he does, having the most rotten luck in the world. But he doesn’t waste a moment jumping in after the oar. Once inside the water, his body betrays him. He can’t pump his legs, he can’t swim, he can’t draw breath, he chokes on water; he’s drowning.

He thinks he deserves it somehow. All past instances when he has had this exact same feeling flash through his mind and he finds his way out of this iterative abyss like he has always done before. He reminds himself of his responsibilities towards his family and friend; his cherished memories: holding his baby girl the day she was born...

...his mom’s sweet and sour pickles, his angel’s smile as she said the vows binding her to him forevermore; he could hear them shrieking for him to come back and it was for them that he did. He makes his way back to the boat, nearly killing himself in the process, and finds it to have blown further back. He lets his friend pull him back up. His friend rolls the sail up and the boat stills. He finds the oar floating nearby because that is what wood does, it floats. Joey would have known that too had he paused to think for a moment. Or rather, as his friend later discovered, ceased thinking for a moment.

As Joey’s family tends to him, his friend rows them back to shore. Joey hangs his head, feeling he had failed everyone. His friend crouches next to him, gently tipping his chin up to look straight into his bleak, hopeless eyes. “It doesn’t make you less of a man if you need help once in a while, Joey.” “What if it isn’t once in a while? If it’s all. The. Damn. Time?” “Then you would be the strongest man I have the good fortune of knowing. I don’t think I could manage that, what you do, dealing with it everyday.” “I would never wish it upon my worst enemy.” Joey whispered into his friend’s embrace.

It was not the wind Joey needed to battle, it was the stream of his thoughts that he’d wrongly assumed to be helpful while they whittled down his peace as he moved around, unaware. Fear morphed into terror, pain into agony, as depression swept him off his feet like a tree uprooted in a gale. It was not the water that drowned him but his worries coalesced into crippling anxiety. He forgot who he was. Until memories of loved ones brought him back to himself as he fought to live, day after day.