I delicately dipped my foot into the thick black water that wrapped itself around the dock. It was October and the air was crisp and sharp against my pale skin. Goosebumps billowed from my pores and the hair on my arms stood up straight, like a saluting soldier at a funeral. My toes touched the surface and a chill ran its way through my body like a lightening surge of ice filling my veins. I didn’t hesitate. See, somewhere along the way I have become so accustomed to the bitter cold. Whether that was from a childhood filled with winter boots stuffed of snow or simply the lack of hot water in our household. Ice baths feel more like home than anything. The cold, in my experience, is nostalgic. A nostalgia that shocks you and pierces your brain like ten thousand needles, I’m awake. Sharp and distinct, a collective of memories I don’t think I would have if it weren’t for the adrenaline that accompanied them. And now, as I wade into the brisk open water here at the lake where I grew up, I feel more at home than I have in the last seven years of my life. Overlooking the thick forest I let my body fall beneath the surface, my eyes in line with the top of the lake wandering across the landscape. I barely blink as my tears meet and break the surface of the dark horizon. My eyes stark red and bloodshot, I know I’m ready to let go. As the barrier between gaze sinks, so does the rest of me. All the memories of tortured circumstance where I was left to believe it was my fault. My fault for being born this way, my fault for standing outside of the box my fault for loving and living too strangely for the rest of the world. It’s ironic now how the frigid water consumes my lungs on purpose, after years of being dunked unwillingly beneath the surface. Ironic now that I’ve invited the bleak death into my existence after all the years of fighting it. Quite pitiful to think, isn’t it? That long after my disappearance from this life I have only but wandered back to succumb to everything I once left behind. The bubbling of water begins to fill my throat full, a mocking acidic sting, much like getting water up your nose as a child in the local swimming pool. Except this time, this is no happenstance. The purge of my demise is simply the winning of their demons becoming mine. And surely my incapability of shaking hands with them has meant a chokeholds thrust around my neck. Demons hands clasped at the bones of my esophagus, one last smothering breath escapes. It was October, and no one cared that I was home.