Will To Live

by B. York
October 18th, 2005

I’m floating. Well, it seems like I’m more submerged at the moment. It takes me a moment to realize where I am and that still doesn’t make sense. Everything is dark, my body feels weightless but it is not peaceful. My lungs begin to realize; I’m not breathing. Suddenly, it’s panic. Arms start flailing; my mouth shuts hard and contains what oxygen I have left for some reason unknown to me.

This is when I’m looking around, blurs of the moments through corporeal space of matter filtering into my mind; the moments that may be my last. I stop to realize it for what it is; my last moments. No, I tell myself unable to accept what it might be for reality. The key is not to panic. My eyes start focusing as best as they can and I start pulling up the metaphorical anchor that’s tugging me down further.

Up, the only way out is up. My arms stop flailing and they start acting methodical. I’m swimming, I believe. Pulling myself from floating, I can see the edges of my vision blurring in darkness and my head begins to spin inside. Thinking of what I have to live for, it has to keep me going after all. Mother, Father, and my future come to mind. Particularly the future I’ve squandered, the future I refused to act on. Never applied to those colleges, never went to Australia, and never got to see what I thought I was destined to be witness to. I am getting older and I haven’t yet made a move forward. How old was I now and my dreams were still the same distance away from me?

The focus was keeping me awake enough to push myself through the liquid. I can see something just beyond the surface. I can’t die like this! It can’t end this way! It’s getting darker, but I can see light. It’s getting much darker, but I know with that last strain of strength that I can break the surface.

“Welcome to re-life, Abe.” The next thing I can hear is the doctor saying this to me. My eyes are focusing again and I’m hardly panting for air now. The off-white allure of an office, the sterile scent of medicine, it’s all coming to me very slowly. My parents are here, smiling proudly. They have tears in their eyes; tears of worry. What just happened? What accident was I in?

“You passed the test; you get to go home now.” I’m confused. I don’t understand and I’m looking towards my mother and father for guidance. This isn’t real, is it? What is real anymore? The doctor is handing me a plastic card. Sitting up, I start to read it.

Abe Carter
Certified to Live
Issue Date: 10/25/2050

It was then that I realized, life will be better from here on out.