I have died before. People call me crazy and say it didn’t happen like it’s impossible but I know. I know I have died. I know what it feels like. I know what it is like to be reborn. I know what it is like to start over.

     That’s what I did last summer. I drowned.

     You know that feeling when you’re underwater and you forget everything? Your mind goes completely blank, probably from lack of oxygen. That is what dying feels like. It feels like nothing. It feels like it should be nothing. Like everything that happened before it what was nothing. Like what you are doing now is nothing.

     But while you’re dying the nothingness is everything. Which I guess makes everything nothing.

     While I was dying I realized that I am nothing. I realized that if you don’t think something hurts, it doesn’t. I realized breathing in water was the same as breathing in air. I realized that everything was and is in my head.

     I was underwater for eight minutes. I was dead for at least four of those minutes, maybe seven of them. I don’t remember exactly when I started breathing water. I remember when I stopped though. I remember when my lungs were filled. When my body had no more space for the water. When it would’ve rejected even the purest of air.

     People say that a short death is better, that an instantaneous death is best. They are the same people that paint death as a loss when it is also a gain. They are the people that quote “best for last” but see death as grim.

     Death is not a loss from my perspective. If anything it is a trade. A life for a final experience.