Again and Again and Again

I left my house a little after 8:30 and this morning looks like a near carbon copy of the last two mornings’ June gloom. I get a text from my ex-wife just before leaving that catches me off guard and throws me into a tempest of stress, guilt, confusion, uncertainty, and despair. I’m trying to see all this for what it is. A tempest. Humankind has managed to survive tempests throughout history and I don’t see why this should be different. I think the worst thing I could do now, ok not the worst thing but not good either, is to skip the swim. If ever I needed to get in the water, it is right now.

I get to the parking lot and someone is exiting my favorite parking spot just as I arrive and I hope this is a good sign. I head down the stairs and boy this day just looks so so grey and seems to be an exact match of my insides. I don’t even care. I’m trying not to feel and also struggling to feel everything that is around me. I just don’t know what to make of my internal or external surroundings. All I know right now is that I am going to walk down to the beach, get in the water, and swim. That is my entire future for as far as I am concerned right now.

I get to the beach and there is, again, tons of washed up kelp on the sand. I get in the water, I start swimming, dive under a wave and rise to the surface right into a flotilla of seaweed and I feel like some kind of sea monster. The water feels like it might be a touch cooler than yesterday, but it’s totally fine. I feel completely unaffected by cold right now.

I swim south because I swam north yesterday. I wonder if today I should just swim west right into the horizon. I’m trying with all my might not to get pulled down by this wave of overwhelm I feel right now. I want to flush out these feelings of dread and hear what it is the ocean has to say. I feel like I was swimming to shore and then got caught inside as a rouge wave comes crashing right into me. One moment I see golden sand and warm sun and the next I am being held under by white water and not sure if I will ever reach the beach.

All I can do is cleave to what I absolutely know. I know that I will be ok. I know that there is a path through this. I know that I need to relax and feel my way forward. There is this part of me that doesn’t believe that. There is a part of me that sees utter destruction in my immediate future. There is a part of me that thinks the universe has suddenly conspired against me. I swim through all of these feelings. I try to breathe out the darkness inside me and spew it into the ocean. The ocean has plenty of space to hold all of this. It can take it. The ocean is silent but I think I can feel what it is trying to say. It is here. It always has been here and it will always and forever be here. There is nothing that I am experiencing that it has not seen and it knows that these things always pass. It will pass and I will still be here. Me and the ocean. And I will keep getting back in the water to swim again and again and again.