Strolling alongside the seaside, I started to really feel a magnetic pull from the rolling whitecaps forty yards out. I staggered to the place the water rushed over the sand in waves, and I froze. Watching wave after wave roll in, I stared out on the blue abyss till the moist sand started to break down below my weight. The siren’s name beckoned me to maintain strolling out into the depths of the indignant ocean. I might disappear and nobody would discover. Or even when somebody ultimately did, it will be too late.
In these moments of quiet contemplation, I considered my youngsters, my enterprise, and what little I had left of my religion. I used to be an entire failure in every a part of my life. Perhaps everybody and every part could be higher if I weren’t round. I closed my eyes and took one other step into the waves. Then, one other. As I descended into the swirling void, I felt an amazing sense of peace. It was as if the wrathful waves and tossing water have been completely mirroring my interior turmoil. Though I used to be getting pounded by the surf, the stress in my physique instantly clicked off like a lightweight change. I used to be ready to maintain pushing ahead to a spot from which I may not return.
I stood within the water with my eyes closed and my mind mentally checked out. Surrendering to my circumstances, I continued ahead step-by-step. Because the water surrounded me, I had no sense of time. Time is totally irrelevant while you’re ending your life. Submerged, I persevered ahead and felt the water splash above my shoulders as my toes struggled to make contact with the ocean ground. As my head lastly made it below the water, I simply knew I’d discover the peace I used to be so desperately looking for. As an alternative, one thing very completely different occurred.
All of the sudden, I used to be scared as hell. My eyes exploded open with a shot of adrenaline as I coughed up salty water. My physique was letting me know that I used to be mendacity to myself! I didn’t need to die. In fact, I used to be scared of dying as a result of I nonetheless had a lot life left to dwell, regardless that my foggy thoughts couldn’t see it. I turned my again on the raging waves and slogged my technique to dry land.
Once I acquired to the seaside, I lay within the sand and stared up on the countless stars punching by way of the night time sky. For a second, the world felt very large and my issues very small. I noticed that what I actually wished was to be a greater man, father, and chief. That incident proved to me that if I didn’t make a change, I’d die in Lexington, Ohio.