Swamp-Walkers by Star Matis

Photo Source: Unsplash

Living day by day with mental illness feels like a trudge through a swamp while people without these issues dwell in a pleasant forest. I sharply raise my leg to take a step, but mud and vines drag my foot down. In the forest, steps are gentle and light. The swamp’s air is heavy, warm, and the overwhelming stench is suffocating. The forest, I’ve heard, smells of morning dew and flowers. As I struggle to move in the swamp, bullfrogs avert their gazes and croak to themselves. I haven’t seen any of the animals from the forest, but I can only imagine they’d have a little more sympathy.

            Life in the swamp changes a person. Beliefs are warped into ideals, relationships are forged through the muck, goals are set to keep you going through the sludge. The way people in the swamp learn to think is vastly different than in the forest, and I am no exception. As a swamp-walker, I can only speculate about how the mind of someone in the forest might work. The forest is intensely different than the swamp, though, so we must function in different ways for our own environment.

            Something we swamp-walkers have in common with the forest people is a chance to find comfort in a higher power, or rather comfort in the belief in one. Being in the swamp or the forest does not define if you believe in a god. Quite a lot of swamp-walkers visualize a benevolent deity as their guide, holding their hand or waiting just around the bend, ready to comfort them whenever they find a need. I do not.

            I believe that there has never been a deity in the swamp, or at least no deity anywhere near my part of it. If there were higher powers guiding people through the swamp, why wouldn’t they simply remove their people from the muck, or destroy the whole place entirely? My trek through this disgusting locale has disillusioned me.

            But I don’t want to be the type who mocks other swamp-walkers for their belief. In fact, I respect them for finding a source of hope that motivates them through their days. Whether I agree with theism or not is irrelevant to people who need it. I do not. The only power I need is within myself. I do not expect a god to come and save me. The only way through the swamp is with my own two feet.

            I may not have a higher power at my side, but I am not alone. I use my own power to make my way, but I cannot rely solely on myself. If I trip over a root jutting through the gunk, the ground is often too slimy for me to pick myself up. So instead I reach above my head, waving my filthy hand, and almost always I find someone to grab it and pull me to my feet.

            Connections are built here. In the thick filth of the swamp, bonds are made to be stronger than anything dragging their makers down. I met my girlfriend through a swamp-walker support group. Time and time again we have brought each other to our feet and kept moving. If not for the swamp, I wouldn’t have found the girl I love.

            As of today, we’ve been together for nearly a year. A long-lasting and healthy relationship is something I have wanted for a very long time. It’s been a goal for years, something I’ve kept myself going for, traipsing in the swamp day after day.

Goals like that are reasons for me to move forward. If I drown in the mud, I’ll never finish the novella I’m working on, and I can’t ever be acclaimed as the writer I am. If I let myself sink, I’ll never get to legally change my name to what I want- no, to what it needs to be. I’ll never get my own home, my own pets, my own life. Surviving each day is a goal itself, a step towards each of these bigger aspirations.

My thoughts as a swamp-walker are significantly different from whatever may be within the mind of someone walking through the peaceful forest. And while the swamp is stifling, the ideals, relationships, and goals I have formed from being here are something that never would have come about if I were somewhere else.

Star Matis is a poet, writer, and college student at Loyola University of Maryland. Star is passionate about fiction with darker themes of morality and mortality as well as personal nonfiction and poetry. Star also is an active employee at a local goat farm outside of school.

If you would like to learn more about Star, you can find Star's Carrd with additional information here.