For my mind likes to create its own suffocating desert to nestle in.

I was suffocating. And it wasn't because of the stifling heat that surrounded us, a pair of hikers who had been trudging through the dunes and craters of the Sinai for hours. It is true that I hated the heat, and since I was a child, I dreaded the summers. It was a time for me when there was only one thing I could do: close my eyes, grit my teeth and wait for the awful heat waves to pass, uncomfortable in my own skin. 

I would have truly preferred to spend the month of August elsewhere than in this arid desert of the Middle East. Perhaps I would have rested in a small, secluded stone cottage in the middle of a wooded village in the Southern Hemisphere. Or maybe I would have decided to visit a Scandinavian country? Driving along the coastal roads, sniffing the sea breeze. You know, the one that whips the face with its distinctive icy cold and fills the nose with an iodised perfume. I could almost taste the sea on the tip of my tongue. 

But I was in the desert, and northern seas were far away. Which I had chosen. 

To tell you the truth, none of my problems would even exist if I did make the choices that I want to make. Do what I actually want to do, go where I really want to go. It sounds silly mentioning it, and yet, I am not living the life I want to live. No one is forcing me to do anything. I am my own dream breaker. There are many potential causes to this. I may be passive, afraid, or even worse, masochistic. Perhaps a little of everything.

Although, I sometimes think about it and tell myself that I am not special. No one realistically lives the life they want to live. I just need to grow up, stop being ungrateful and roll up my sleeves. Let things be, accept them as they are, no matter what. 

Well. I admit that there is another way of looking at things that I enjoy more. I just answer back to the previous inner voice and counterclaim that it is simply absurd to think this way. For it is nonsensical to force oneself to act against their own desires.

It would take me less time to finish this crossing of the desert, extending over several tens of kilometers, than to finish discussing my odd pointless decision-making process. And what's the point of talking about the causes, or even the consequences - as devastating as they may be - of these prohibitions that I set up for myself. The truth is that I think I'm doing everything in my power to be happy, and am undeniably losing myself at my own game. Am I trying too hard, not knowing life is in fact a paradox?

My colleague stopped abruptly, and wiped her sweaty forehead with the back of her sleeve.

"I need to take a break," she breathed.

I realised as I stopped that I was so lost in thought that I hadn't paid any attention to my current physical state. My skin was wet, my breath was short, and my legs were shaking. Call it a curse or a gift, but I've always been able to put my body on hold. My thoughts, much less. 

Maybe it was my mind, that, folding in on itself in endless swaths of self-flagellation and sketches of worst-case scenarios, was choking itself. Yet imagine placing a plastic bag over your head, or completely holding your breath under water. After a few minutes, your survival instinct will force you - more than nine times out of ten - to untie the bag, or to come back to the surface. When I am lost in my thoughts, I feel like my ego is my executioner. Holding my thoughts as it would an axe on top of my head. The very opposite of the survival instinct. So I would argue that it is better to suffocate physically than emotionally. 

"It's really hot," I whispered as if to force myself back to reality. 

"Yeah, I hope we find the entrance to the canyon soon. I hear you can even swim there!”

We hadn't known each other long, but I liked Selena. We had both been contacted by a local Egyptian university to excavate a site. We didn't have much in common, except that we were both researchers, coming from Europe and sharing a small room without air conditioning for the summer. In spite of my habit of criticising myself all day long, I could give myself some credit on that point: it takes courage to resist to these temperatures.

Although, to come back to what I was trying to say, it is in my everyday life that I suffocate the most. I feel like someone else chose my life for me, and I am now a prisoner of it for eternity.

It is hard to reinvent oneself. If I tried to change jobs, find another career, what would my options be? I’m only good at digging in the dirt. Stirring up the past. If I left my husband, I would never find someone as good, because he is so perfect I turn my back to him every night, and cry.

Maybe what I am looking for, this oasis in the middle of my hopeless dreams, simply doesn't exist? My life is dry and empty because I've waited too long to water it. Too long to take care of myself, to be the master of my choices. But who can tell me that a better life awaits me elsewhere?

We arrived in front of a small cliff, with a makeshift path that indicated that we now had to climb upwards. We looked at each other.

"Do you know if this is the only way?" I asked her.

"The only way."

"They should definitely pay us more." 

We laughed, but it was getting harder and harder to even breathe in this weather. We stopped again to drink from our water bottles. We realised that we did not have much drinking water left. Fortunately, our research center had provided us with straws that we could use in case of emergency to filter any wild, outdoor water. A powerful, even revolutionary technology, but unfortunately too expensive for developing countries to use on a large scale. 

Another part of me reminds me often that I have no right to complain, as I live better than the majority of humanity. Yet, my heart is dead. I keep moving forward because I don't know what else to do. But the truth is that I do not wish to climb this cliff, I do not wish to arrive to the canyon and the excavation site - which now seems to not even exist anymore - just as I do not wish to return home at the end of the summer.

I do not wish to live.

Six words, that are arguably among the scariest to hear. Yet they echo in my head as the six most truthful words I could ever pronounce. 

Selena wouldn't understand. She is the kind of woman who will smile enthusiastically as she sweats in the middle of the desert, thirsty, lost and far from civilisation. The one you meet and immediately picture as a ray of sunshine, uplifting everyone around. The one who will never complain, and who will never bore the potential readers of her travel diaries with borderline suicidal writing. 

Maybe it's because I've often compared myself to these women, that I've made myself more miserable. Comparison really is the thief of joy. 

"Look!" she exclaimed.

I looked up, and there it was. We could finally see that little turquoise spring, which I had already pessimistically stopped hoping for. She gave me that broad, open smile, because of course, for her, there was never any doubt. We went down the slope, using the little energy we had left. This is where survival instinct comes into play, gathering every bit of hope. But it's always easier to have hope when our expectations are directly in front of us.

Maybe that's what I need. Something tangible, that would be so close that I could see it, even touch it. I always feel like the things I seek and the dreams I have are unattainable. Unreal and utopian, even. I don't even bother to try. 

As I approach the water, and gaze at those little sparkling shimmers all around, I think maybe my oasis is just around the corner, but I have stopped believing in it. 

Perhaps it is time for me to come back to the surface. To allow me, to be.