Learning to Float

Paola Campos

World Lit. Honors P.6

Ms. Bennett

22/4/2014

Learning to Float

A moment captured with the press of a button and the bright flash of a camera.

Six years later and the first thing I notice are the four simple words that were religiously etched on to the inside of her left wrist in perfectly looped cursive.

I refuse to sink.

Just as the words never faltered to appear on her supple, pink skin, they were continuously conveyed through her passionate words and poised actions.

She was confident and collected, but knew how to act with empathy.

She was relentless and determined, but understood when it was time to step away.

She was riveting and admirable, but was capable of letting her guard down fearlessly.

And now, she was gone.

In mere seconds, a tidal wave of despair engulfed me, dragging me deeper and deeper within my own conflicted conscious. Grief ran through me like a disease. It ate away at my thoughts, contorting and corrupting them beyond my own recognition. It took control over my voice, twisting words into venom and spitting lies at those who were undeserving.

It had been 64 days since my sister had her accident, and 56 since she slipped away from us in her sleep. We were told her death was painless and quick, but they couldn’t have been more wrong, because the pain of losing the one person who knew you better than you did was both overwhelming and infinite. But in that moment I began to understand that nothing, even the most traumatic and painful of obstacles to overcome, lasts forever.

There are sayings that people use about time healing all wounds, but that’s not completely true. Time does not heal all wounds, all it really does is patch them up and conceal them long enough to be forgotten under more recent, fragile wounds. Time makes you numb, which others consider to rule over the hollow sensation of depression.

But a dazed heart can only be distracted for so long.

I realized then that no matter how much time passed, your wounds never truly heal, but the way you face them does. It is one thing to allow sorrow to control your life, and another to fight back and refuse to sink, because life goes on and your time is limited.

Lena would have chosen the latter.

And now, so will I.

For the both of us.