Shallow and Narrow Surfacing, in the midst of functioning in the deep end, simply to live and breathe.

With insurmountable effort and without permission, will heavenly authorities demonstrate their power and authority to wipe away your mere earthly and borrowed existence in a single wave or through cognitive and inadvertent extinguishment, irrespective of the footprints you left in the sand, the number of interactions that crafted memories, professional endeavors, secured currency and assets, and with significant disregard for all the roads traveled.

 Humans live life objectively and subjectively, always seeking ways to make their lives make sense to them in their individual capacities. People actively live to thrive both operationally and cerebrally, and to functionally comprehend their experiences from a distinctive, individualistic, yet relatable perspective.

To live means to superlatively live out loud.

To live means to be abundantly and congruently equitable, free, and secure.

To live means equal opportunity and corollaries.

To live is an extrapolation of breathing.

We all have an urge to live, whether that corporeal existence is lived publicly or in secret.

We all experience unanticipated crises and situational adversities. What matters most in these situations is how we navigate and learn from such conditions.

To live is to die. To grieve. To be desolate. To effectively circumnavigate uncertainty and ambiguity.

Conversely, to live is to be content. To thrive. To stay morally and ethically erect.

To live is to love and be loved.

To live is not a stopgap, but a dubious and enduring continuance, from inception to cessation.

Generally, life is an embankment. But more importantly, it is an embodiment of individual perpetuity.

I mean, how much easier would life be if the waves of the ocean and household showered waters washed away and abolished the desolate, grief-stricken tears and replenished one’s soul with hopefulness and discernment? For me, it’s been 4 long, emotionally-laden, and mentally challenging years, yet I still acknowledge our wedding anniversary; this year, it will be 10, while knowing and loving one another would mark nearly 14 years of unprecedented territory. I still have not, and without a reasonable doubt, succumbed to total cognitive annihilation of devastation, mortality, overwhelmingness, and numbness. For the most part, I don’t think I ever will overcome this deeply embedded and looming grief, a lifelong journey that I will never indubitably surpass. Still, it will forever be a power-struggling and power-exerting experience that I will try to energetically suppress.

Recognizing that four years ago, on my birthdate, marks the date on which I experienced the most traumatic experience of my life. Such experience is similar to riding an elevator, in which most establishments fail to acknowledge the 13^th floor due to the triskaidekaphobia phenomenon, a sign of bad luck. My birthdate and the subsequent days, from accident to date of death (DOD), mark 13, and have become days in which I refuse to celebrate, especially given the weightiness of uncertainty, probability, and makeshift moments that I endured. Each year, I solemnly recall all the moments when I looked for ways to recharge and recalibrate my physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional batteries, simply so I could transfer that energy to my husband, making his fight a little easier and helping him heal more expediently and hastily, and to combat negative energy that had become inevitable, but I digress.

For the past four years, I missed out on living life. I missed opportunities to surround myself with life and living. I showed up for others while forgetting to show up for myself in the same aptitude. I failed to give myself grace and permission to live. These gallant actions left me swooning in my private cocoon from sheer emotional exhaustion. I forgot what self-care meant, even after researching and practicing it for years. But in reality, I didn’t care, as there was no time or space, especially because for four years, I have been psychologically operating in survivor’s remorse, drowning and breathe stricken capacity and in fight or flight mode, all while physiologically confronting challenges and threats head-on simply to protect others and their livelihood, all while still in a state of shock, disequilibrium, and through severe brain fog and all while being medically diagnosed with acute and prolonged grief. As a woman, mother, and wife, my nurturing and caring nature reached its most profound level.

Due to this life extrapolation, today and from this moment on, I mandate that you take on the individual and collective responsibility to achieve your lifelong goals and objectives, to be free, and to positively and innocuously live out loud and with decorum, free of disapproving, shallow, and narrowed expressions and especially living amongst others with individual, cultural, racial, and physical differences, whatever that looks like to you, and without worrying about society and public perception or misconceptions. Live on the deep end, one that can substantively eradicate shallow and narrow experience and thinking. Navigate a fruitful, experience-filled life that positively divests itself and future generations of antiquated societal norms and behaviors, because, as we live and breathe, there will come a day when life as we know it ends.