Recover we

“How ya doing?” someone had asked.

“Treading water,” I said. “Which is a lot better than drowning,” I added.

The week before I was going under.

Glug. Glug. Glug.

“It’s not so bad,” I thought as I was being pulled deeper.

Glug. Glug. Glug.

People, places and things like weights,

The anchors.

The “reasons”

The pressure only increasing the lower I sank.

How quickly we descend, swallowed in a gulp and a glug.

Only by grace,

However it comes,

The glint of the sun on the water above

The warbled shouts from those who love us calling from the shore,

A shadow in the depth that frightens us enough to trigger both fight and flight.

With limbs flailing frantically, I make it to the surface – gulping air, willing to give life another chance.

Tiredly treading, assessing the un-managed remnants, I try to gain my bearings, to catch my breath, to survey my surroundings.

Each time I get the shoreline in sight, I’m pulled below the surface again and again.

Glug.

Spoils from generations of shipwrecks clenched in my hands

Glug Glug

Thick, rusty, Jacob Marleyish chains pulling me under.

Links of expectations, obligations, failure, anger.

Links of should haves, what if’s and until then’s,

Tethering me to the abyss.

Glug. Glug. Glug.

All this exhausting energy hanging on, waiting for justice, expecting different outcomes…

Has it changed anything, besides me?

I’d lost my lightness and language and laughter and lilt.

When did that happen?

Recognizing with some horror the lifelong futility of my efforts I give up. I close my eyes, trusting a power greater than myself to keep me afloat – and with that decision,

I

Simply

Let

Go