The first part. I’m in the middle of a sea with no shore, but swimming as if there is some end, somewhere. So it’s exhaustion, it’s feeling overworked, like the work is fruitless, like I’m drowning, fine. Then the thing appears underneath me some years later, in the water. It’s a slow reveal. 

One night the endless depths beneath me simply seem to darken. The reflected daylight becomes navy, but there is no cloud overhead and it only gets darker. Like one of those oil spills. Then a vague shape, borders rippling in what could be miles, could be feet of churning water. Some nights the water is rough, others calm, but the sky is always clear blue and there is never a drop of rain. For months the thing below is this undefined ink spilling upwards. Then I really get a sense of it. It’s size, it’s limbs, it’s eyes. There are no teeth, which is in some way worse than razor-sharp jaws. I’m swimming away from something that’s rising to snatch me in its gaping, toothless maw. 

There’s a lot of frustration at simple geography over these months, because I just feel at such a disadvantage. I can only swim horizontally, but this thing has all the time in the world to drift up at its own leisure and swallow me whole. Or whatever it’ll do to me. So it’s the inevitability of death, it’s general impending doom, garden-variety anxiety, whatever. 

It’s been years at this point, right? Years of this thing slowly developing. So I go to therapy. Hit the gym. See friends with more intention and frequency. Sleep with people, go to parties, tell jokes and witty anecdotes and I’m generally well-liked. I’m not just saying that either, I think if you really went around and asked my friends what they thought of me, without my being present, they’d say I was an alright guy. But yeah, I was feeling good, generally. 

At these parties I picked up some drugs, and they kept me from dreaming. I even told myself that I was dreaming about other things, like aspirational stuff or women I had crushes on or even showing up to work in my underwear. I craved normal stress dreams like that, can you believe it? 

Well, I didn’t like the other stuff the drugs were doing to me, so I stopped eventually. I stopped around a time life felt really, truly, very good. And there I was. Right back where it left me. An ocean, and me, and a thing under my feet rising faster than ever. I could feel a pressure change in the water as this immensity heaved the water up in its thrust to the surface. 

I was quick to go back to therapy, because everything else was so good, you know? Why let this stop me from living my life? And the therapist tells me that I shouldn’t assume the thing is out to get me. It’s inevitability, which is a concept I’ve always run from. Being over-controlling, thinking I’m invincible and being reminded I’m not, refusing to accept reality, sure. Therapist tells me to stop swimming. To exhale, because you know when you’re in water you sink when there’s no air in your lungs. Tells me to greet the thing with the open jaw just inches from my feet. And life is pretty good, besides this recurring dream I’ve had since being a little kid. So why not? 

That night I’m swimming, and bubbles slip through my toes, up my thigh. It’s closer than ever, but I stop. I let out all the air in my body, and I sink into the blackness as its mouth breaks the water’s surface miles around me, and begins to close. 

Then the worst thing happened. 

In an instant, I knew my therapist was wrong. I knew I was right to be swimming frantically towards land, even knowing it would never come. Since twelve years old, I was right to assume it meant me harm. And it was not okay. And the jaw is still closing, eternally showing me the sunlight, the morning, the waking and pretty good life that I was right to fear losing.