I cannot reach the water's edge without making myself jump in. It's a superstition. An internal conflict. A fear of loss. Loss of an experience, of a memory. Why make it to the water and not wade beneath it's surface? Even if it's cold. Oh, it's cold. I don't want to get my hair wet. No. Jump in. Always jump in. As if the moment that you submerge will remain, stuck there, in a salted suspension. A preservation of a feeling. Feeling free, and disappearing.

Disappearing beneath the surface, outside noises shifting from loud and interrupting to muffled. You hit a rock here, step on a shell there. If it's cold enough, maybe you won't notice until you emerge, blood coming down from a cut that was numb. That's just it. You're feeling something, beneath the water, secluded from the outside world. A different atmosphere. Where your thoughts and sights are the only things that keep you. Your weightlessness. The way the water holds you. Reality only hits you when you come up from its depths and feel the sting and look down, and there it is. The outside world. The blood rushing down your leg. But for a moment, you escaped. You pushed yourself. You let yourself go and came up, feeling alive.

You picked up a pen. You tied your leg to the table and wrote until something meaningful came to you. You are there, in this moment, descending deeper from the outside world. Submerging into your own, into your thoughts. It's how you make sense of it all. It's how you learned to explain, interpret, and understand the things you see and feel. The things that make you feel afraid. The things that make you happy and loved and ecstatic. All of them. Write them down, as if no one had ever tried to before. Capture something; a moment, a heartbeat, the blink of an eye. The way that it changed you. Describe a scene, a portrait of a place. Show people something through your own eyes of perspective; that's the power of writing.

Maybe it's not a notebook that is your power of choice. Maybe it's a camera. A paintbrush. A baseball bat. What is it that takes you into this other world? This atmosphere that leads you to exclusion and discovering. To explore and keep submerging and realizing and learning. A place beneath the surface that belongs to you, that depends on a willingness to risk, to suspend disbelief. To forget what you learned and mistook and loved and lost.

I applied for a study abroad program five thousand miles away. I knew I was scared, but I wrote the essay and sent it in without letting myself think too hard about it. I accepted the program offer when it came. I tied myself to it. Even though I was afraid. Why? Now I had to jump in. I couldn't get away from it. I knew, in the end, it would force me out of my comfort zone and into another world. That's what you love to do, I told myself. Don't get stuck in one place for too long. Don't get too attached. Don't get hurt. But let yourself love. Open your mind to new experiences. See this, see that. Take advantage of other cultures. Submerge. Assimilate. Become a part of someone else's world in order to expand your own. Then write about it.

I wanted to dive beneath the surface.To strap myself to a vest and disappear beneath the salty waters with an oxygen tank on my back. You're afraid, again. Unsure of all of the moments leading up to it. The mask and fins they will hand me, the regulator, the air tank. Will by BCD work? The weight belt. You have to wear the weight belt. Otherwise you can't descend far enough. You float right back up to the surface. You know the feeling it brings once you descend; the poetry you'll find written in the natural world that isn't of access to everyone. The silence it will bring, as you equalize your ears, and go farther and deeper from the loud and interrupting noises. Your thoughts become your world. It mirrors your place of writing. You tie yourself to the weight belt.

And jump in. Always jump in.