𝐨𝐡 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐝𝐨 || steve randles sister

𝐛𝐲 𝐦𝐞

when you drown, you don't start breathing until the moment that you realize you somehow have to live.

suffocating on the thought of life, you get this image in your head that someway you're going to survive. You feel helpless, and start to wonder how in the world you ended up here in the first place.

your mind is racing, pondering the idea of what you're going to miss when you die. You've never once said it before. You've never once said you were going to die, because it never occurred to you that one day you were.

it never occurred to you that today was the day that you die. The last thing you physically feel is a gagging in your throat, something trying harder than your will to stay alive to overcome you. You open your eyes to calm yourself down, trying hard to focus on something other than the darkness, but instead you see this light. it scares you more than the idea that you can't breathe.

in-fact it wasn't white like the stories that you hear in the movies. it wasn't life changing like they describe it.

there's nothing spectacular about realizing you're going to die.

it's purple. it's a purple light, and it makes you feel comfortable at first until you realize that it's the last thing you'll ever see. Your stomach, it wraps in knots like you're being pushed off a cliff. it drops to your knees as you begin to remember what it was like when you could effortlessly breathe.

you feel the water around you. the sharp coolness of the underwater waves as you kick your feet. trying to resurface, looking up helpless to the air above you. hopelessly devoted to this idea of staying alive. Heart racing, head getting dizzy, limbs becoming heavy as the water pulls you down.

you think of someone in your life you wish to hold in the arms that are being pinned to the surface of the ground beneath you. you long for their touch, their smell, their voice. you long to say i'm sorry to the people you took for granted. the people you hated. the people you can't remember why you disliked. you feel sorrow in your slow beating heart for the people you judged or mistreated.

for a moment, you close your eyes almost as to wish the world away, hoping to wake up in your bed, recovering from a bad dream. this is it though. no more waking up because this is your last bad dream. a dream you'll never survive.

you cry in terror, but the tears go nowhere but in the water that's taking the breath from your body. You scream for help as water fills your mouth, lips no longer chapped when soaked in your surroundings. countless minutes go by. countless minutes of suffering until you breathe because you want to. because you think you can.

you're so tired of struggling but blackness floods your memory. life flashed before your eyes. it's cliche, the memories that you're feeling.

you're dying, you say to yourself. In this world you're already dead.

you've been lifeless for minutes now. You regret what you haven't done and even what you have. you miss your people, you miss yourself. But you can't feel it. you can no longer think.

you're a nobody in a body of water that took the life of a somebody.

You're nothing when you die. You're nothing when you drown. so, that's what it's like to realize that you're dying. That's what it's like to realize that you've already been dead.

I sometimes ask myself why people die. The answer should be simple. The answer should be a reason, but sometimes it feels like i'll never find an answer as to why archie levenger died that night. losing my belief that the world was perfect, because when you keep asking yourself why it had to happen, you'll never get an answer explaining why it did.