Pressure

Sometimes I feel completely surrounded. I feel like the pressure building around me can only get heavier and I want to run. I visualize it like the pressure deep in the ocean, in the darkest depths of the sea where the squid lives and the pressure would kill you. This is the area where I picture a sunken ship- a ghost of failures past. Other times I see a swirl of images. My sister losing her house, my brother as his job gets closed down, my cousin as the father of her child leaves her at fifteen, the sickening swirl of chapters I haven't read, plants that needed to be watered, bills that I can't pay with money I don't have, me in the future, never having chosen a career, never loved my work, never helped anyone, never successful, living paycheck to paycheck hoping to make enough. It paralyzes me and all I can do is lay in bed-terrified of things I can't even wrap my mind around. Things that aren't solid. An overtone say it will be alright. But the pounding, swirling baritone beneath is drowns it out and swirls on. And I can only go deeper into this ocean.