by Samantha (the_one_from_below)
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I'm so cold, oh God, so cold. Where's the hole? I can't breathe, I can't see! If I can't feel my legs how can I push off the bottom? It's just muck anyway, I can't push, I just sink. I think I'm about to die. I don't see my whole life flash before me, no white light at the end of the tunnel, just cold murky water surrounding me and pulling me down.
The phrase "watery grave" keeps repeating in my head. Oh God, it's getting so hard to think now, I'm so panicked. My lungs are trying to draw air out of water. I'm not a fish, so I choke. I can feel the slimy lake water, icy and deadly, sliding down my throat, trying to kill me. I think how my parents will feel and how guilty my friend Omar will feel. He was the one who said the ice was thick enough to walk on. Guess what? It's not.
My feet finally find a rock. I push off, searching for the hole I came through, but I find only ice. I beat my hands against the ice, trying to break through, but it's solid. My hands sting from hitting the ice so hard, but they are so numb that the pain barely registers in my mind. I can't believe I'm going to die less than ten inches from air. Beautiful air, I never realized how precious, how perfect, how important it was.
All I want now is a clean, delicious breath of air, but the ice refuses to yield to my fists, thwarting my attempts at escape and I can almost hear it laugh, mocking me. I'm gonna die here. I'm gonna die. I can't die, but I will if I don't find the hole. I'm so cold. I just want to be warm and breathing. No longer am I worried about my soaked clothes, my ruined shoes. How can I care when I am about to die in the cold lake less than two miles from the safety of my own bedroom?
I start to sink back to the bottom. My feet hit the rock, pure chance now. I push off hard, using all the strength I have. I can't die. I hit the ice with my arm and my head and I feel give. I return to pummeling the ice with my hands, using all my remaining force to try and save my life, to draw breath again. This is like nothing I've ever experienced. It is a long way away from coming up from a dive in the deep end of the pool towards air and safety. This is coming up towards ice and danger, the ice I still can't beat.
The ice is starting to give, not much, small cracks. I hope it's not just wishful thinking. I can't really get the energy to hit the ice anymore. I'm swallowing more and more of the slimy cold water. As I choke I wonder if this is it. All my life, everything I've done and planned, was nothing but a filler until this point where my life ends? At this point I plead to God to save me.
I can't put into words how alone I feel. How cold and alone. I'm the only person that exists. I'm frantic, panicked, my heart is exploding, my lungs screaming. It hurts so much I can't take it anymore. I try to scream for help so I don't explode, but I don't have any air to scream with. As I try to scream the water rushes in my mouth and I swallow it and I'm choking again; I can't stop.
I reach up to hit the ice again and I hit nothing. At first I think I found the hole, but there is no accompanying sting of cold air on my wet skin, just more water. I'm laying on the bottom and I couldn't even tell. The mud is sucking my down, making it even more impossible for me to push off and get up. I try to find my push off rock, but I must have drifted in my panic while I was choking. Choking is what my mind first associates with swallowing the water and never getting any air to relieve my pain. Then I realize the word for what's happening is not choking, it's drowning. I'm drowning!
At this moment I have a perfectly clear mental image of how much ice is above me, how much water I'm in, and where I am in relation to the air that my body desperately needs to live. I think this is the definition of terror, realizing how close to death I am. I was scared when I was walking on the ice, each step made a cracking sound, then I heard a larger crack. I fell. It was the strangest sensation. It felt as if I were staying still and the world had jumped up around me. I was more upset about the clothes I was wearing, because they weren't mine, than I was about getting out of the water. I didn't expect to lose the hole. I didn't expect water so cold it numbed me instantly, indescribable cold that hurts while it numbs.
I was scared then, terrified even, but that was nothing compared to this. Yes, this is terror, absolute and complete. I'm about to die. I push up, knowing there is no way I can break a new hole now, I'm busy choking. Too busy drowning. Too busy dying. I push up anyway, making a feeble attempt at breaking my way toward freedom.
I reach the ice after what seems like an unending journey through the frigid waters. I hit at the ice, my arms flailing without direction as I continue to try and breathe in water. One hand hits the ice and the other one doesn't. I can't believe it, then I stick my hand up and feel the cold air bite into my upraised palm. I found the hole! My scrambled, air deprived brain can't even comprehend what this means at first. I'm going to live!
I think, thank God! I'm going to live! But I'm not moving, I'm too weak, I can't pull myself up, not even enough to touch the air. I grab the edge of the ice again, pulling for my life. I flop out of the water halfway, like a dead fish. Except I'm not a fish, so the air that is death to fish is life to me. I breathe, coughing, air never tasted so delici--then the ice supporting my lower body gives way and I go back under the water.
My brain has taken too much strain in the past few minutes; it's stuck on reflex. There is no air, only water, and yet the fried relays in my brain are telling me to breathe. The water that is life to fish is death to me. I pull myself up again, with renewed strength, into the air and breathe, gasping and floundering on the ice, trying to get my numb lower body on top of the ice. For a minute I think I'm gonna fall again and then I wake up, gasping and disoriented.
For a second I think I'm still in the lake. Then I realize that I'm home, safe in bed in a room filled with air I don't have to fight to breathe. It's been three days since I fell through the ice, three days of nightmares. Three days since I inched my way across the ice to the side of the lake. It seemed like forever and twice my hand pushed through into the water, but I made it to the side and just lay there breathing the air I never thought I'd breathe again.
Now, lying safe and warm inside I have a sense of perspective I never had before. Life is precious and I'll never take it for granted again.