Drowning & the Incurable Need to Breathe

Have you ever experienced the sensation of drowning?

I have.

I watched a YouTube video about free divers, explaining what happens when one is falling, falling, falling deeper into the darkness of water. The human body actually begins to shift bits and pieces into a tighter space to accommodate the pressure. Yes, the pressure —literally the increasing weight of water pressing in on every inch of the surface of your body. Internal organs are compressed, the heart, the lungs, the muscles — and physiologically your body conforms to fit the new shape it’s being pressed into. With it comes a decreased need for oxygen, allowing the stores gulped in at the start of the dive to be more adequate, more precisely used, as your body literally shrinks under the force being exerted by the deepening water.

And the thing I said about “falling” deeper? That’s actually not entirely accurate. After the initial period of natural buoyancy a human body experiences in water, the pressure becomes so great that instead of “falling”, you’re literally being swallowed, sucked down and down and down, the water crushing you from every possible angle, squeezing your mass into a tighter shape. The better to swallow you, my dear.

At some point, your stores of oxygen will begin to dwindle, despite your body’s best efforts at economizing, and the physical need to breathe will overrule the “freedom” in free diving. You’ll have to push yourself back up to the top, at first fighting against the pressure, and then fighting your mind against the burning of your internal organs, your lungs, your entire form as the pressure subsides and you begin again to fill out your proper, pre-dive proportions.

Between you and me, this all sounds absolutely terrifying, and I don’t understand why people do this activity for fun. In fact —

It’s an apt analogy for what an artist goes through when she’s experiencing depression — and let us be frank, an artist (like myself) experiences depression quite a lot. We have a creative epiphany, we dive in, the spirit adjusts to the pressure … but then …. that foreboding sense of sinking, lungs tightening into hard balls of aching fire, mind and limbs growing numb from the sheer will of hanging onto every last molecule of Life amid the pressing, pressing, pressing in on all sides by the world, the weather, the circumstances, the pain, all of it crushing the soul.

It’s a balance, the artistic urge set in the stage of 21st century reality. But it’s also a struggle — no, a battle, an absolute, all-out, blood and bone flying war-zone … in the mind. Sometimes the oppression is simply too much. And I’ve found, when that happens, I shut down. Like the free-diver, I’m no longer falling so much as I’m being pulled. And my oxygen stores begin to dwindle. And also like the free-diver, that’s when, somewhere deep inside, as the internal bits have been rearranged for economy, the soul having long-since shifted to accommodate, I recognize I have a choice to make.

I can sink further into the darkness and cease to exist in that vast ocean of crushing void ….

Or I can remember what it is to breathe, even if just an inkling of memory. And I can will my legs to first slow, then cease the falling, and to finally propel me upward again. It’s true, once I’ve gone that far under, the fight is all the harder, but that’s where Art comes in.

There is a saving grace in Creation. Sometimes it comes from a place of joy … but for me, more often, it’s born from my will to kick, my need to breathe. This is what, more than anything, propels me to create. When I feel myself growing numb, after the initial shock to the system (and it is always a shock, despite my having been through the ebb and flow of it a thousand times), the fight forward towards expression, that is the kick which halts the fall, the kick that silences the deepening void.

At some point, in one kick after several powerful kicks, using an inner force of will I maybe didn’t have if not for some holy and merciful external forces — like the soft touch of my spouse, a kind word from a friend, an hour of sunlight on my skin — I find I’m no longer fighting the sucking-pull, but instead sense a gentle tugging upward again. My lungs are still on fire, more so even — I am, after all, running desperately out of vital oxygen — but I feel my rib cage expanding once again, my limbs no longer dead weights but growing buoyant again. Inner parts of my body begin to shift into their proper places, and the blackness all around turns into a gentler shade of grey, until —

I burst forth, in light, the crust of water broken by air. My mouth breaks open, nostrils gulping in Life. And I am floating once again.

“Hearts are wild creatures, that's why our ribs are cages.”

THIS. IMAGE. I can't stop staring at it. I can't stop thinking about what it means to me. "Hearts are wild creatures, that's why our ribs are cages." That quote has stuck with me for about two years, when I first stumbled across it, and this image — this exact image — came to mind. I saw that quote, and FELT that quote on a soul-deep level.

But my skills hadn't caught up to me yet. So I waited. And I learned. And I thought about that quote. And I thought about how to make this image work. And even though I had no idea how I was going to manage ripping a hole in the chest of beauty and innocence — the way a hole is ripped in mine so much of the time — I knew I had to try. So this week, I went to it. I tried.

Many-hours later I was at the point of tackling that chest cavity, the torn fabric, the shredded flesh. It took me three hours yesterday to get the effect. Three hours. Maybe it's an easy thing for someone else, but I had to reason my way through that, wrap my depression-weary brain around how to accomplish it. And when I did, the entire piece became whole, and my heart felt alive, my mind buzzed, my soul sparked fire.

I can't wait to do it again. I loved that feeling, that rush of joy at making something so beautiful. I hope I can say that about what I create without sounding pompous and sure of myself. Because 99.999% of the time I don't feel sure of myself, not at all — but THIS? This is mine, and I'm owning it.