And I have sunken so far, yet my arms reach for the shimmering surface, my legs kicking with aching numbness as my body refuses to let me drown in what I thought were my own failures. Those failures were lies. I blamed my fear of perception. Those millions of prying eyes, they were never there to hurt me. The sea of sorrows that surrounded me in the darkness, the cold, the water... They were the sorrows of my loneliness. The sea was conjured as an illusion, shrouding the failures of those who should have been there to lift me through the water, instead of letting me sink into endless loss. Even now as I write as if I had always known the letters on the page could remedy me, I find my solace in this craft. My fingers shake with the cold and the fear but they never once froze. I am pulled up by not those millions of eyes, instead, the ones that shine down on me through the dark, their light glitters from above the surface as they see me. Not my sorrows, not the sea that surrou...