The Neverending Beach of Mental Illness

Trigger Warning: Suggestions of self harm, suicide, abuse references!!! Mental illness is like a beach to me. Mental illness is like being stranded in the open ocean, treading water, most of the time alone. As you tread you get hit by different types of waves, some are smaller and you only get resoaked and recover quickly, others your forced to swallow more water as they collide with your body. Then there's the waves that cause the most fear, the ones unseen and below the water. These pull you under and all you can do is be gripped by fear, fear this is the end of you. Even as you resurface you're disorientated, still the fear floods your mind and veins, gasping wildly for air. You are at the mercy of the ocean, the waves. You may even start to wonder what will be the reason you die: the varying surface waves, the underwater waves, or will it be you give up treading the water? You grow weaker and more fatigued as the ocean has its way with you. This then may give way to the however brief thought of you just want it over already. You're tired of being beaten and battered, of drowning slowly. Surrender may sound somehow desirable or poetic at some point, a relief. You start to wonder if this is what you want after all. You know if you stop treading water you leave monumental pain for at least one person. If you dont you get beaten and battered further, but they won't know a world without you, you'll still have all the things life is worth living for. But there will always be a part of you that wants out of this damn ocean. That craves to just lay on the beach's sand and just exist, recover, or breathe for awhile. You're aware that the salt water and wounds you've sustained will remain upon your body, for the damage is done, but you feel it be heaven just to lay in the sand and exist. However when you reach the shores of the beach, you discover that the sand burns and grates on your battered wounded body. Sometimes when you finally get to the sand it's a shock to the system, it's so hot when you're so use to being cold and wet. Other times you don't have the energy and just collapse into the waiting inferno of the sand, too weak to move. You may weep or scream as you lay there, unable to digest what you endured. All while the permanent fear of the ocean reclaiming and pulling you back to its malicious depths lives inside you. It will reclaim its plaything/victum soon, we live knowing this. Even when you adjust to the sand to where it's tolerable, shell shards and sea glass awaits underneath, cutting your flesh when you least expect it or when you misstep. Even safe areas of sand can be dangerous. You learn to over question every decision, move, or step you make on the neverending beach of mental illness, you never know when you're gonna get hurt or cut. You start to question whether the beach is better than the ocean, on a glance the beach would be better some will say. However the unknown can be the most terrifying versus the known. Sometimes you may feel like the ocean is luring you back like a abusive lover or that you swim your way back whether unconsciously or on purpose. Because the known is what we are use to and less scary than the unknown of the beach. Some of us have been drowning or treading most of our life, this is what we know. You would give anything to be off this beach and away from the ocean, stuck between chosing the known while facing the beatings and the unknown of a seemingly safer beach of infernal sand.