The whole idea of it makes me twist and turn like a stubborn cork. Something more upsetting than long winter days seeming to last forever,

The water giving me shivers worse than the cold bite of January frost,
Scarring my opinion of some of the once thought to be the joys of winter.
The memories of perfectly misshapen snowflakes, the armies of unsuccessful snowmen and three armed snow angels replaced in an instant.
Something worse than the sun setting halfway through the day and being replaced by whirlpools of snow and ice flushing my face.
Spending all my days cooped up in my house,
shivering and layering everything from shirts to socks.

You tell me it’s helpful.
You tell me only because your mind is wary and forgetful of the daily glacial submerge into the chlorinated water,
making my eyes blur out the colors of the world,
My soul spin into a dark room.
I try to light a candle yet,
each one burns out the second I set light to it,
leaving me in my own room devoted to suffering and torment for the next two hours.
You disregard all of the bleary eyes and limp bodies,
staggering around like zombies without their daily coffee fix.
You draw no attention to the pleads our eyes deliver,
as we stutter out the few words in our personal six o'clock AM dictionaries to try to guilt you into letting up.

But now,
now I float, struggling to lift my arms,
Let alone swim miles, as if swimming into a never ending horizon. Now, I doubt, I try to dream But am snapped back into reality.
Sometimes, I wonder if it would be easier to give up. I wonder if this struggle is worth it.
I try to dismiss the thoughts already imprinted in my head like a misspelled tattoo.
My arms drag along the surface of the water like ripped sails,
My legs a broken motor dragging behind me.
My heart fluttering like a butterfly with a broken wing.

This is the beginning of my pain,
The perpetrator of my soreness to come,
The first drag on the endless cycle of nicotine.
Constant pain,
With an unexplainable urge to return,
Despite your will.
Mindlessly, a slave to my conscience, 
As I robotically summon just enough energy to proceed.

This is the beginning of the stress,
Compressing the positive thoughts rambled in your head until they are too small to shed light too.
It’s time to endure the dreaded,
Time to roll the dice of pain.
Hoping for the jackpot,
The three cherries,
Crossing every finger,
every toe,
In hope for the one dollar slot.

It seems like only yesterday I used to believe,
That fortune and happiness can come to me with the flick of my finger,
The squeeze of a lemon,
But now, as I gasp in pain as my soul searches for a way out of my mind,
I realize,
That it’s so much more.