What One Leap Into a Lake Taught Me About Living

A small story about depression, presence, and one brave leap

We all live with limits — limits of what we can take, what we can live with, and how we adapt. Over time, we get so used to our hang-ups that they become the default, something that just is. We tell ourselves we’re broken, cling to labels, or, when we’re completely uneducated about how our minds work, we can even convince ourselves that’s just life.

But it’s not meant to be this way.

This is the small story of a time when I literally jumped out of my own depression and into a Berlin lake.

The Weight of a Berlin Summer

It was one of those perfect Berlin summer days that so rarely arrived, and when they did you felt an urgency in your bones to seize the day. We had wandered deep into Treptower Park — Denise, myself, and two of her friends — past the Soviet memorial and the tourist paths, until we stumbled upon what felt like a secret lake hidden from the world. Tucked behind weeping willows and old oak trees, it was our own private escape, a pocket of wilderness that the city had somehow forgotten.

The lake was about the size of a small park — deceptively expansive, hidden behind trees, and easy to miss unless you knew…