I live my life in the deep end of the ocean. Most days, I feel like I’ve been swimming forever. My arms feel heavy, my lungs are burning, and my legs aching from the effort of staying afloat. It’s as though the shore is either so far away that I’ll never reach it, or maybe… doesn’t even exist at all. But I think I was meant to exist out here, in the deep—where the water is endless, and the bottom is too far down to touch. Where I struggle to keep my head above water long enough to gasp for the air I need to continue—to keep living, keep fighting.
I feel everything like a tidal wave—love, loss, longing, hope, heartbreak. It crashes over me, fills my lungs, and leaves me breathless. Leaves me wondering if I’ll ever break through the surface again or if I’ll finally drown under the weight of it. I don’t know how to turn it off. I don’t know how to float on the surface, untouched by the pull of the current. And I don’t think I want to.
“To feel deeply is to live deeply—even when it hurts.”
Because to feel deeply is to live deeply. Even when it hurts. Even when it costs me more than I realize in the moment.
I have given my heart away in pieces—not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Because caring for someone means wanting their happiness, even at the expense of your own. It means offering warmth, even when your hands are cold. It means carrying their weight, even when your own knees are about to buckle. And I have done that. I have done it willingly. I have done it without regret.
But even the strongest swimmers get tired. Even the ones who refuse to sink eventually need a moment to stop fighting the current. And I am learning, slowly and painfully, that sometimes it’s okay to reach for a life raft. That letting myself be held does not mean I am weak. That leaning on the people who love me does not mean I have failed.
Because I am not meant to survive this alone. None of us are.
And maybe that’s why, even in all of this uncertainty, I don’t feel like I’m drowning. Because I know I am not alone. Because I know that when I have nothing left, there are people who will reach for me, who will pull me to the surface, and who will remind me that I don’t always have to swim. That sometimes, I am allowed to just exist, to just be, to finally just breathe without having to fight for the air.
So I will keep feeling. I will keep giving. I will keep loving, even when it’s hard, even when it’s uncertain, even when it leaves me aching. But I will also love myself enough to know when to stop, when to rest, and when to let go.
Because my heart is not a burden. My love is not a curse. And I am not too much.
I have believed for a long time that I was. That I was too much, too intense, too emotional, too impossible to love without it becoming heavy. And maybe that belief should have broken me. Maybe it should have made me let go, let the current take me under, let myself drown in the weight of it all.
But it didn’t.
Because believing I was too much made me fight harder. It made me swim when my body screamed to surrender. It made me push forward even when I could barely breathe. It made me stronger than if I had never questioned my own worth at all.
“Maybe the very things I thought would pull me under are the things that have kept me afloat.”
And maybe that’s the paradox of survival—that the very things I thought would pull me under are the same things that have kept me afloat. The waves I thought would swallow me whole have instead carried me forward.
So I will keep swimming. Not because I have to, but because I refuse to stop. Because I refuse to let the weight of my own depth convince me that I am unworthy of love, of peace, of solid ground.
And one day, maybe I’ll reach the shore.
Or maybe I won’t.
But either way—I will not drown.
© 2025 Kimberly Beth Thomas. All rights reserved.
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