Drowning

You had a chance to get out of that life; you had an escape in me. I offered you a passage, a portal to a world of sunlight and warmth, of sandy beaches and palm trees, of sophistication and clarity, of art and transcendence, of political correctness and an air of intelligence. I left my world, dove to your depths of mind-numbing simplicity, and I took your hand, I used every last ounce of my energy to pull you up to the surface, my surface. I extended you kindness, pure compassion and caring that you couldn't have experienced otherwise; I offered you myself, though you didn't know that I was withering away. I gave you love, I gave you trust, I gave you all the clichés that are expected from such a relationship, all the clichés that I thought that you deserved. I took your hand and I began, I tried my hardest to pull you up.

But as my withering began to overwhelm me, I knew I was running out of breath. I knew I had to escape, too; I had to escape from you, if only for a moment. You'd plucked me from my world of transcendence, pulled me down to your depths: to the crime, the racism, the poverty, the ignorance; you'd inadvertently dragged me down with you. I wanted to stay with you, to pull you towards the surface; I just had to recover myself, take a breath of my own before I could regain the strength to dive back down. I had to rediscover myself, know who I was so I could know who you were, too. You said you'd wait, and I trusted that. I trusted you.
It seemed, however, that as soon as my lips had reached the surface to take that fatal sip of air, you'd turned your gaze downward, back towards the murky depths, distracted. I called, I cried to you through the water, but you didn't listen; my words merely erupted in bubbles, shimmering and contorting in their dance back to the surface. You instead took the hand of another, one of your kind, and allowed her to drag you back down to those simplistic depths of yours. All of my efforts were shattered; I felt a sinking, writhing mixture of betrayal and despair. I had wanted so much for you; I had thought you deserved better than those depths. I wanted you to experience the feeling of a breath of air; the warmth of the newborn sun before it hit the water, scattered, and filtered to the depths; the touch of the breeze washing over you, renewing you. I had so many hopes for you, but it seemed as if, in the blink of an eye, you had forgotten all about me; your memory of me vanished as if we had never known each other at all. You took the hand of another, and you allowed yourself to be dragged down to your familiar depths, leaving me suspended, treading water…

Is it too late to dive again, to try and take your hand again?

…do you deserve it?