Back to the surface

All my life I remember having that feeling of a constant undertow in my soul. I felt it all the time. Sometimes playing music would quell it. Sometimes reading would distract me from it. Sometimes going for a bike ride or a long walk would push it down for a while. But it always came back. It felt normal to me to have that feeling in my gut. When I was about 14 years old, I discovered that when I drank, though that undertow didn’t completely disappear, I just didn’t feel it. Of course, it always came back once I sobered up. But I knew exactly how to fix that: I drank.