Madness of Regret

I should be dead.

My body distorted. My lungs collapsed, compressed into useless husks. My ribs bent, warping under the weight. Flesh strained and stretched, forced into shapes it was never meant to take. My bones didn't break—they folded, molded like hot wax beneath the crushing abyss.

I should have been nothing more than a ruined corpse sinking into the eternal blue. My brain, starved of oxygen, should have shut down, its delicate pathways unraveling into chaos. And yet, somehow it didn't. I remained. Aware. Conscious.

The pressure should have destroyed me. The dark blue should have done much more than this.

She was not forgiving. She was fickle. She was a storm. A god with no mercy, no warmth—only the endless hunger of the deep. She did not care if I was meant to live or die, only that I belonged to her now. The tide was her breath, the current her grasping fingers, the crushing black her voice, whispering of eternity.

I had sunk beyond light, beyond warmth, beyond the world I once knew.

And she watched. Waiting. Deciding what I would become.

She was not a mother, nor a savior. She was a force, vast and insatiable. The abyss did not love, did not hate, did not mourn.

She simply took. She claimed.

And if she chose to reshape what she had stolen, it was not out of kindness, but purpose.

She had swallowed sailors whole, crushed vessels like paper, filled the lungs of the foolish with salt and silence. She had seen empires rise and fall above her, their echoes lost in the ever-reaching dark. 

Time did not touch her, nor did the prayers of those who feared her depths.

She did not listen. She did not answer. 

She only was.

The water pulsed around me, thick with unseen shapes, with the weight of things that had never known light. Eyes I could not see traced the edges of my dissolving form, watching. Waiting. I was not prey, not yet—but I was not whole either.

I did not know if I was being welcomed or devoured.

Perhaps, down here, there was no difference.

I had been stolen, taken into the deep. But I was not the first. And I would not be the last.

She didn't speak in words. She spoke in knowing. In hunger.

The deep dark blue had a purpose for me. She always did.

And I could feel her reshaping me, piece by piece.

I would not return as I was.

If I returned at all.

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 But that was not the first time I should have died.

I should be dead.

Not once, but a hundred times over. By my own actions, by the cruelty of fate, by the indifference of the world.

Sea sickness should have left me weak, delirious, barely clinging to consciousness on that damned raft. A hollowed-out, wrung-dry stomach should have drained the last of my strength, leaving me too empty to fight, to move, to survive.

The Komodo dragon lookalike bastard should have torn me apart, a hundred times over, dragging me under with nothing but teeth and hunger.

The sun, the thirst, the relentless, burning days should have hollowed me out, driven me into madness long before my body gave in. The wounds I carried—each gash, each bruise, each festering mark—should have spelled a slow, miserable end.

The storm should have finished the job, whether by drowning or by hypothermia, by the simple, inevitable cruelty of the elements.

Even the whales, in their gentleness, could have been my undoing. Their nudges, so careful, could have sent me drifting beyond saving. Their hunt, their waves, should have flung me far from my raft, lost forever in the churn.

The dark blue should have swallowed me whole.

And yet, I remained.

Almost as if I was meant to be alive. 

Almost as if someone—something—had willed me to stay. 

Almost as if I was destined to survive.

But why?

By all logic, I should have been gone. Swallowed by the waves, lost to the abyss, forgotten by the world above. And yet, the water had spared me. The storm had passed over me. The beasts had not finished me. The dark blue had not swallowed me.

Something had kept me here. Something had refused to let me go.

It was not mercy. It was not luck.

I had not escaped.

I had yet to be claimed.

I had only delayed the inevitable.

And whatever had spared me…

wasn't finished with me yet.

I should be terrified. I should be praying, bargaining with whatever higher power might still be listening. Hell, I should be drowning in regret, replaying every bad decision that led me to this exact moment. But I'm not.

Instead, I feel alive. Not just awake, not just aware—alive. Like every moment before this was spent in a half-conscious daze, going through the motions of a life that never really felt like mine. And now? Now, with my pulse pounding and my next breath uncertain, I finally feel something. Something real. Something electric. Something unique.

Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I was never built for comfort, for security, for the predictable rhythms of a so-called normal life. Maybe I've spent years trying to force myself into a mold that was never meant to fit me, suffocating under expectations that were never truly mine to begin with.

Or maybe—just maybe—I'm just an adrenaline junkie with a death wish.

Either way, it doesn't change the reality of right now. 

No time for second-guessing. No time for doubts. The choice is coming, fast and merciless, and when it does, I'll either rise to meet it or be swallowed whole.

But maybe that's the thrill of it. Maybe that's the whole damn point. Because for the first time in a long time, I'm not afraid of what comes next.

I'm alive. And whatever happens? That's half the fun.

---

Funny thing about clarity—it doesn't come when you're safe. It doesn't come when you're sitting in a cubicle, staring at a clock, waiting for the next socially acceptable time to escape your own life. It doesn't come when you're nodding along to a conversation you don't care about, pretending the weight in your chest isn't slowly crushing you.

No, real clarity comes when your heart is trying to beat its way out of your ribs. When your next breath isn't guaranteed. When every sense sharpens because your body finally understands that survival isn't a given—it's earned.

That's where I am now. Caught between the past that led me here and the future that wants to swallow me whole. And the craziest part? I don't think I'd change a damn thing.

I think about the years I wasted trying to be someone I wasn't. The cautious choices. The careful steps. The relentless need to color inside the lines, because stepping out of them meant risking failure, rejection, or worse—being seen for what I really was.

But what _was_ I? A shadow of myself? A hollow shell going through the motions? Some nameless, faceless figure blending into the background of a life I never asked for? 

A face behind the countless mask.

Maybe it was the first time I felt the rush of doing something I shouldn't have. The first time I tested my limits and realized I'd barely scratched the surface of what I could endure. The first time I stood on the edge of a moment like this, staring into the abyss, and realized that fear and excitement felt an awful lot like the same thing.

Because this—this chaos, this uncertainty, this raw, unfiltered now—is where I thrive. It's where I've always thrived. Every moment before this one was just a prelude to the truth: I was never meant for a quiet life.

And yet, I tried. I tried so damn hard to be what the world wanted me to be. I smiled when I didn't want to. I sat still when I wanted to run. I made safe choices because that's what I was supposed to do.

But safety never made me feel alive. It only made me feel trapped.

I exhale slowly, rolling my shoulders, grounding myself in the moment. The weight of the decision ahead settles on me, but it doesn't feel heavy. It feels exhilarating.

Do I fight?

Do I run?

Or do I do what I've always done—the unexpected?

A grin tugs at the corner of my lips, a quiet, reckless thrill curling in my chest. Whatever happens next, it won't be careful. It won't be predictable. It won't be something I regret.

Because for the first time in my life, I'm exactly where I'm meant to be.

Right on the edge of chaos, staring it down with a wild, unrelenting hunger.

And I wouldn't have it any other way.

The mask is being lifted slowly but ....

gradually.