On Drowning in Plain Sight
Photo by Jacob Walti on Unsplash
Vulnerability leads to wholehearted living, to emotional connection, intimacy, and happiness — or so I was promised. I watched the TED talks, read the books, and preached about its profound power to everyone who would listen. I shared my life experiences with the world — the shame of religious indoctrination, dysfunctional parents, poverty. Yet somehow, I feel more alone than ever, trapped in the creaky passages of my mind.
Writing has become my sanctuary, where I transform the pain of my lived experience into art. The shame that lives deep in my bones — the lingering voice of my flaws — I roll it carefully in my hand until its sharp edges smooth into something beautiful. Each story becomes a release for the shame that binds me, punctuated by rare glimmers of insight and hope that occasionally pierce the dark clouds of my mind. These are my experiences, this is my voice, this is me.
But you don’t see me in words, do you? Praising my prose, admiring how I’ve layered emotions into a storied mosaic — this isn’t the same as seeing me. Does transforming the gut-wrenching ache of shame into art somehow diminish its truth? Am I doing vulnerability wrong?
Let me try something different:
I am invisible.
I want to be loved, but I am unlovable.
My suffering is my fault, because I am disgusting.
I am a monster, because of my flaws.
I hate the world because I don’t fit in it, because I am different.
Is that better? Can you see me now? When I strip away the words that hold together the beautiful horror of life, does my truth appear from the darkness? Do you want to read my story, to feel my suffering without a beautiful filter, or will you still praise my vulnerability under the guise of literary appreciation? Will the algorithms that share my stories with the world still want to show the ugly reality of my existence to the masses? Will I be seen, or just thrown in the pile of people too far gone to be worthy of help, worthy of happiness?
The Weight of Water
Have you ever saved someone’s life? I have, many times, and the feeling it brings is unremarkable. Growing up poor in Durban, a tropical beach town in South Africa, I found solace in the ocean. It was free, open year-round, and it didn’t judge my sun-faded board shorts or acne-riddled teenage face. As a lifeguard on some of the busiest beaches, I watched hundreds of thousands of people flock to swim in the warm waters, to be tossed by powerful waves and strong currents that welled up from the deep turquoise of the Indian Ocean. Many had never seen the ocean before, many were drunk, and many were mistakenly lulled by the warm sun and soft golden sand into believing the waters were safe. They weren’t.
I remember one day in particular. A young boy was bobbing a few yards from shore, caught in the same powerful waves that tumbled beach goers up the shore, filling their ears, noses, and underwear with sandy reminders of the ocean’s power. He was stuck, out of his depth just feet from safety, unable to break free from the current’s grip. He was drowning, and no one had noticed.
I was walking back to my station, lunch in hand — a burger and fries from the local greasy spoon. I had nothing with me but a whistle around my neck when I spotted him. Dropping my lunch and bright yellow lifeguard shirt at my feet, I dove into the churning water. All I had to do was move him a few feet closer to the shore and he could stand again, safe. But I couldn’t do it.
The water was deeper than I anticipated; I couldn’t touch bottom, either. When I reached him, his eyes were wide with terror, and he immediately clung to me, arms wrapped around my neck. I struggled to keep us afloat, positioning his face above mine so he could breathe while the white water rumbled into my nose and mouth. I was drowning, too.
We were trained for this scenario. It’s entirely normal for drowning victims to panic and do anything to survive, often trying to climb onto their rescuer’s back in a desperate attempt to get as much of their body out of the deadly water as possible. Our training was simple: go under with them, and they’ll let go and scramble back to the surface for a breath of air. I’d done this countless times before. But that day, when I saw the terror in that little boy’s face, I just couldn’t do it.
Instead, I held him above my head, arms stretched, keeping his face clear of the water while I remained submerged, my toes occasionally brushing the sandy bottom. I managed to get my waterlogged whistle to my lips, and with a powerful push off the bottom in the trough of a passing wave, I launched us up and clear of the water. I tried to blow the whistle as hard as I could, hoping to alert the other lifeguards, but it just gurgled uselessly between my lips. “Fuck,” I swore.
Then, whether by luck or divine intervention, the next wave crashed over us and rolled us up onto the beach. We lay there in the wet sand, the small boy still in my arms, both of us coughing and wheezing the salty water from our lungs. I’d saved him without having to let go, and we were both alive.
He cried in my arms, terror giving way as his little body was racked with sobbing relief. I think he was thanking me in one of the many South African languages that I didn’t speak. I hugged him, assured him he was okay, and went to retrieve my shirt and lunch. But they were already gone, stolen in the moment it took to save someone’s life.
The Weight of Words
Almost every morning, my wife rolls over and asks how I’m feeling. It’s a kind gesture — she shares this space with me, experiences my depression almost as profoundly as I do myself. She asks because she wants to create an opportunity for vulnerability between us, a moment of intimacy. I love her dearly and appreciate the struggles and hurt she endures because of the illness that has claimed the past few years of our lives. And yet, I resent her question with a hatred that burns at the tip of my tongue.
I hate it for many of the same reasons other depression sufferers describe: You are still part of the story I am processing, and I’m not ready to talk to you about how I am. I don’t know how I feel; I don’t even know who I am. But I don’t say any of that. Instead, I smile or frown and offer something trivial — I’m fine, or good, or not good. Something superficial to acknowledge the effort of checking in while brushing off the pain of feeling like my suffering is invisible and exclusively mine to endure.
Recently, as a weeks-long depressive episode began to lift, I felt the fog of self-loathing shame starting to dissipate. Without prompting, I told my wife I was beginning to feel better. “I’m glad,” she gushed, “thank you for telling me.” It’s a common request from her — “Tell me how you’re feeling so that I can be there for you. You can share your vulnerability with me,” she’s said during countless teary conversations about my mental health.
My insides churned at her response, white heat rushing to my face. “Fuck off” were the only words that rushed through my mind. I’m not a dog; you can’t train me with positive affirmation to give you what you want. Don’t you see me? Don’t you understand that sometimes I have no control over my mental health, that I’m not trying to hurt you when I can’t — or choose not to — tell you how I am? Why are you making my brief glimpse of sanity, my moment of feeling okay, about you and what you need?
Perhaps this is the cruel irony of vulnerability: in our desperate attempts to be seen, to connect, to heal, we sometimes create new wounds. Like that day in the ocean, we’re all just trying to keep our heads above water, clinging to whatever promises of safety we can find. But unlike that day, there’s no wave to wash us safely to shore, no clear moment when we can say we’ve been saved. There’s just the constant struggle to stay afloat, to find authentic connection in a world that often mistakes the performance of vulnerability for the real thing.
The Weight of Being Seen was originally published in Invisible Illness on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.