i.
She remembered drowning.
She remembered screaming for help. Flailing in the water. Choking on salt. Her tears mixing with the sea.
She remembered feeling resigned to her fate. Floating instead of fighting. Swallowing instead of trying to keep her mouth closed. Her lungs burning.
She remembered aimlessly drifting. She saw no light. She only felt cold and dead and empty, but so full at the same time. Heavy. The water was still trapped inside of her, after all.
She was painfully aware of the cold grip death had on her heart. Aware of her stillness. She wasn't breathing. She was just floating. Like she was stuck on the exact moment in time wherein her heart stopped beating.
(Everyone had it wrong.)
There were no fires in hell. Just water. The ocean. The salt and the sea invading every part of her. Darkness.
She burned. Oh, how she burned. But there was no fire. She felt only cold. Ice cold.
Sometimes she felt like she preferred a death by fire. Something warm. Something to fend off the all-consuming cold of drowning. Something to see instead of the nothing of a trench.
She felt like she didn't remember what warmth felt like anymore. Warmth from the hearth. Or a hot cup of coffee. Or a hug from a loved one. Her memories were a hazy blur. Each time she tried to remember the feeling of a warm embrace, it was tainted instead with the cold. Death creeped into every crevice of her mind.
She doesn't remember what grass felt like beneath her feet either, but she could imagine. She remembered it was green like the leaves on a tree. All she could do was try to remember what she could. All she had was time.
She didn't know how long she had been in that water. How long she had been dead. How long she had been trapped under the weight of an ocean. The life she had before she only knew cold and wet and dark and isolation was slowly escaping her.
She thought she lost herself to the depths of the sea forever. Sometimes she imagined looking straight into her face. Pale skin turned even paler with a hint of grey. Unseeing hazel eyes. Brown (sometimes blonde) hair floating above and around her head like a halo as she drifted further into the unfathomable abyss.
Sometimes she imagined watching her lifeless body sink deeper into the darkness, while her — another her — stayed floating a bit closer to the surface.
Ah, the surface. She could never quite reach it.
She was going crazy.
So crazy, in fact, that she imagined warmth.
She didn't know for certain if that was what warmth was. She didn't know if what she felt was real heat. But it was different. It wasn't cold. It was something.
She remembered fighting. Fighting harder than she ever did. Fighting harder against the waters that overtook her life. She fought like she should have the first time.
She clung to the possibility of warmth. She screamed and flailed and cried and swam higher and higher to the surface until she saw a light.
It looked like the sun.
(I opened my eyes.)