ON NEEDING MOST WHEN YOU WANT LEAST

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. There have been many exciting things to come my way these past few weeks yet beneath the surface, my surface, has been a prevailing sadness.

At first I thought it was a sadness brought on by a missing of my children, my daughter in particular, and though missing them does add to it, it isn't this alone which is generating unrest in me.

By yesterday, there was no denying the deep shade of blue coloring my days.

I am a swimmer. I try to swim everyday. It helps get me back into shape, it clears my mind, it helps battle the blues, and it's just a good discipline, a promise kept to myself. Yesterday I just wanted to go home and go to sleep after work and almost gave into this thought, then I realized, when I want to the least is when I need to the most, and so I went for my daily swim.

I have long said the pool is my church. I bring those things that bother or confuse me to the water and while I swim they rather bounce about inside my brain, at first there is strong emotion, I tend to not allow myself to focus too much on feelings, well negative ones, and so they tend to be what bubbles to the surface first and fuel my swim, the stronger the feelings the faster the swim, the harder my strokes through the water, pushing towards this little internal click.

Blessed little click.

There is a point where my brain takes a step back from all the feelings and just like that first step back when standing too close to art, everything comes into focus a little more clearly, and I am better able to see what has been in front of me the entire time.

When I arrived at the pool yesterday I was pleased to find I had it to myself. Stepping into the cold water is always a bit of a shock and it took a second to brace myself for that first push off from the wall, but once I felt my body slipping through the water, I swam hard and fast.

It's almost like a movie playing itself out in my head, a crazy independent film where there are flashes of this and that, taken out of order and random, all these thoughts and emotions flashing about, and I allowed them to play as they would, trusting the rhythm of the swim to sort them out, grateful to find myself alone and my rhythm uninterrupted by another's body in the water.

Great sadness and hints of anger washed over me and so I increased my speed, kicked harder, pulled myself through the water with greater force, pushing, pushing toward the little click.

It finally came, more than twenty minutes into the swim, my mind grew quiet as my body picked up on its own rhythm and my brain rather released and I became only body, only breath, legs and arms and lungs, everything else slipping away, sinking to the bottom of the pool to be left behind.

I feel the tug of blue on my soul again today, and there were no epiphanies carried from yesterday's swim, so I know there are still things to be sorted and figured out.

I don't want to write today.

I don't want to go to work.

I don't want to wake up.

I don't want to swim.

But I will, I will do all four and more because I know when I want to the least is when I need to the most.

I have been able to sort out enough to realize, this all has something to do with getting closer to who I am, who I am meant to be, and it seems as I approach those things blue surrounds each step closer, now I need to figure out why, but I have lived long enough to know the how of things.

How I work these things out is I get up. I write. I go to work. I smile. I swim. I make myself do those day to day sort of things and trust myself to recognize the answers when they come, and believe life is kind enough to revel the answers to those of us who seek them.