Fear The Shallow Waters

Art by: Ana Santos

You know, one of the greatest fears people have is that of depths. The depths of the sea, the depths of a deadly fall, the depths of despair.

But I, I am afraid of shallowness.

I drown in shallow waters, in the recesses of my own mind. Like a fish in a tank, I long for the ocean. I long for depth and breadth and dimensions that are limitless. I do not want to be self-contained, I want to bleed colours into the ocean and scatter golden scales wherever I go. I want to turn myself inside out and wear my darknesses and lights like a shirt I’d been wearing wrong my whole life.

I want to dive and jump and sink and get lost. I don’t mind dying if it means I get to live before I do.

But shallow living?

It is only one kind of death followed by another. First, the soul. Then, the body.

But when the soul is dead, what is there left but an empty box? A meat-coated skeleton, a hollow vessel that only echoes back what you throw at it?

Yes. I, I am afraid of shallowness. I fear blandness. I fear not darkness nor light, but this dull grey in-between, this murky puddle that is everyday life.