EPT
Not in water, mind you - that'll never happen. But in my thoughts, I'm being pulled down, further and further, and it seems for every stroke I take, for every inch I climb upwards, I get pulled down so much further.
There are a million thoughts in my head, loud, noisy, screamy thoughts. Every single one demanding my attention, yet not one gaining it in its fullest. The brother who drinks too much and ends up dumping his problems on me, the course I'm dangerously close to failing, the lazy teammate pulling ahead of me despite my best efforts, the inability to think about anything about my grandmother battling a variety of diseases and despite what everyone wants her to believe, coming closer to death each day. The delicate balance between studies/work and swimming that's so hard to maintain, the lack of sleep and worsening condition of my back that doesn't seem to improve no matter how much experts try to fix it.
There are a million thoughts in my head that demand my full attention, that require immediate focus, but I cannot. I spread myself thin as a sheet and find myself unable to do anything properly because there are ten more things waiting after, that I have to take care of before moving on to the next, and the next, and the next. And with every one of those thoughts, the core of nagging doubt deep inside grows, and makes everything yet worse. Each thought makes me less confident in myself, less sure that I can ever accompolish what I set out to do once, years back.
But I push myself further, knowing that giving in now will open the door to surrender in the future. Surrender once and be a loser forever. I can't afford to fail, and my conviction tells me that I won't, but I find myself disturbingly unable to succeed, as well.
There are a million screaming horrors inside my head, and I can't turn them off, can't shut them out. I try to embrace them, try to live in the chaos, but it resists my best efforts and keeps on torturing me. I'm running through a maze, where every turn makes things worse, and every second of hesitation leads to another sleepless night, another night of contemplating whether or not I was right to stop, right to wait.
I feel alone, away from my friends and everyone I know. It's my curse to perfectly understand their situations and help them, provide them with advice they find valuable, yet find myself unable to help myself. Unable to talk to anyone out of fear that they won't understand, that they'll be horrified of what lurks inside my head.
What's in there is ugly. I feel like I'm ugly - not physically, but inside. Something feels rotten inside, wrong, and I'm afraid to talk to someone who might know out of fear that they'll confirm it, that it'll change the way people look at me. It would be a relief to know, perhaps, but a part of me struggles, refuses to take that step.
There are a million thoughts in my head, each a red-hot nail driven painfully into my brain, each reminding me that I'm helpless, sinking deeper into a swirling ocean of violent emotion, and I don't know how to get
I'm drowning.
+ Show Spoiler +
This will come across as self-pity. It is. It might come across as overly dramatic. It probably is that too. It will most likely come across as a pitiful blog from someone you likely don't give a shit about, and it is. It' was not my intent, but I needed to get this out of my system, to feel at peace for a second.
. Also I don't think this is a matter of growing up at all...this sounds somewhat serious. 
