through the glass doors

the key is to not panic.

panic will cause the environment to eat you.
it’s like quicksand but is tainted with high doses of unpredictability.
panic will only drag you down the uncharted abyss. so panic should never be an option. ever.

you know, i say that, but i actually panicked when i first felt the rush of being dropped in this ocean. imagine this- in split seconds you feel as if your lungs swell inside you as it tries to preserve the air being sucked out of it by an unseen vacuum. it’s as if your world caved in after you blinked. you feel your chest, your heart and your brain swell. it’s a mixture of those feelings. for a few seconds chaos runs through my bloodstream. as it happens, flashbacks of my childhood travelling inside the dark tunnel of cement pipes presented itself to me. it’s like experiencing the same feelings. you feel like you’re going to run out of breath, drown, or may be stuck inside a vacuum of darkness.

it’s been almost 5 years since that incident. sometimes i still panic. sometimes that feeling of drowning returns and haunts me for days. but hey, i have learned to stay afloat, swim, and survive. i guess it helps that your dad named you as a friend of the sea.

yeah. i'm not the only one dropped into this ocean. there are lots of us- hundreds, thousands, maybe millions. i don't know how many but there's a lot. you can tell because you can see them at any direction you turn. you can see how they swim and try to survive the new environment. you can see how they adapted and you can definitely tell the fresh ones from the established ones.

well, in essence we can do things. we can swim, build a raft, stay afloat and yeah, survive.

but the thing is there's only so much you can do if you're kept within walls. oh fuck yeah there are walls. these are glass walls that allow you to see other people like you outside. you can see how they procrastinate, how they succeed and how they bask on the freedom that they have.

the fact that they can swim anywhere, can go further and can actually grow outside the glass, sucks big time for us trapped inside the huge aquarium we are in.

whoever or whatever dropped us here must be having some fun watching us inside his aquarium.
i’ve met friends here, built relationships, networks and is able to do things that i like but the ultimate goal is to get beyond the glass walls and go further.

this is a solitary plight.
you know, this dilemma of solving how to get past the glass windows. i never ever wanted my challenges to become additional weight to other people’s baggage.

so yeah. not to panic. breathe. swim.