There is something very special that happens when I blog. I write what is in my heart, and I read it over and I say, "Yes!" And then I post it, and usually at least my husband reads it, and then he says, "Yes!" He gets it. Sometimes I see my lovely friends and they say, "I read your blog, and I really liked it." (thanks for that!) But what is so magical about those moments is that someone else outside of me, outside of my house, gets me. It takes courage to take what is inside me and put it here, for anyone to see. It is difficult for me to share myself, because I worry that I am alone in my feelings, that when I am insecure or scared or crazed that its just me who feels that way. So when you read it and you understand me, I feel relieved that my fear isn't true. And it feels like a gift that I can put my essence into words and it makes sense. But there are a few things about myself that I struggle to fit into language. I can't say these things out loud, I can't write them down, even somewhere that no one else will read. They are painful. They are wounds. They are the very dark inner recesses of myself. But this week I feel challenged to try...so here goes.
Imagine with me that we are on a beach. Well, I am on a beach, and maybe you are hovering overhead watching me. I am born on this beach, and for many years I move forward, with the water on my left and nothing really on the right. I move with my loving parents, my sister, and I am joined by friends along the way. Sometimes they disappear from the beach after a while, but the really worthwhile ones, like Melissa, come along side me and never leave. I think this is a fine way to grow up; it seems that most parents want to protect their children and let them grow up and then send them along the beach on their own when they are adults. And that is what happens... I turn 18, I graduate from high school, and I really see the beach, the whole world ahead of me with my own eyes for the first time. My parents stop walking, they stay back as I keep going forward, and my sister and Melissa head to their own beaches, and I am excited and nervous to discover what is next. But suddenly I am on a beach that looks too different from the beach I grew up on. This beach is chaotic and confusing and scary. I lose my footing and kind of stumble back and find my feet in the water. I never really noticed it before, but now I see that there is a whole ocean and it is still and my feet start to experience a numbness that is not totally unpleasant, especially since the rest of me is still reeling from shock of the beach. I'll admit it, I stay in the water. I prefer it to the beach. I don't know how to deal with everything that is going on there, and so I wade out a little further, I let the water numb me a little more. I start to think, maybe I'm not supposed to be in the water, but I let the water get higher and higher. And what happens at the beach when you are wading out and get too far? I take one last step, and suddenly the ground disappears beneath me and I sink beneath the surface.
In the water, it is quiet. Unlike the real beach, there are no waves pushing me back to shore, only stillness that holds me in place. I am alone, completely alone for the first time in my life. And it is dark. There is nothing to see, and so I sleep. There is no way to mark the passage of time in the water. Even looking back now, I can't say how long I was under. Maybe a month...maybe four. Then somehow I manage to push myself up, and I break the surface of the water. I didn't realize how far away from the beach I got, but now I see it is a great distance. I try to swim back, but all that time that I spent asleep has atrophied my muscles, and I don't get far before I am exhausted and sink beneath the surface again. How much time passes? Again, I don't know. But again, my head gets above the water and I look toward the beach. This time, I see my mom there on the shore, and I start to cry, because she has seen me, she has really looked at me and she sees that I am drowning out here. She throws a life preserver. And for this, I have never thanked her, but I am eternally grateful that she looked for me, and gave me a way to come back to shore. I grab the life preserver, because by now I know that the water is not safe, it might just be more dangerous than the chaos on the beach. It takes me a long time to get back to shore, in part because I am so tired, and partly because it always seems to take longer to go back than it does to go out. But eventually, I make it. Now the beach is quiet. I am alone, so I start walking down the beach again. The water stays on my left, I can see it there now, although I step carefully so that I don't get wet. It is here that I look up and see the sun. Its another thing that I never really noticed before, but there it is, shining down on me, and the warmth helps to dry me off and the numbness finally goes away for good. I can see that I need to keep walking down the beach, and as I go, I start to think less about the water and more about the sun. My feet get wet occasionally, the water rushes up to me and I feel the numbness, but I say NO, I am not going in again, when I am on the beach I can see and feel the sun and that is where I am staying. I know that the sun is a gift, it is something that I get to enjoy without doing anything to keep it there. The sun is steady and it doesn't rise or set, it stays overhead. I still have people in my life, my parents, Melissa, now a family of my own, but they aren't here with me. Because unlike before I went into the water, there is no one keeping me away it. It is the sun keeping me on the beach now.
If this post makes me sound like I have mental problems (as Allison used to say), well, yes, that's exactly what happened. I spent my time in college in a state of depression, and it took counseling and determination to get out of it. My aunt remarked at one point that my bad grades reflected how much fun I was having, and I smiled and let her misinterpretation stand, because it sounded much better than the truth. But perhaps the craziest thing of all is the realization I had this week, 12 years later, that instead of looking at that time under water as a mistake, a regret, that maybe I needed to go under. Maybe knowing the very depths of darkness that are possible make me rejoice my ability to stand in the light. Maybe I needed to drown to rid myself of all that was there before so that I could re-fill my heart with what is good and honest. Maybe this is not a point in my life where I got off-course, but the path that I was meant to travel.
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