Just keep swimming

I wrote the note to myself and I continued to ask myself why I was allowing my body to sink deeper and deeper into the ocean without putting up a fight. How full would I allow my lungs to become with water until I woke up and started to fight for my life? Sometimes the moments are big and earth shattering like lightening cracking on a hot summer night. And sometimes they are like today. He brought up the subtleties between the acts. Sex and making love, the both of them and fucking. He described them and told me the latter, for him, was never preferable. I realized that in many ways I openly solicited the least desire able action. Not so much intercourse but metaphorically. Ever since the ending of the last, I haven't wanted to physically align myself with anyone. Not really, and even when I did. I did not want closeness. I did not want hand holding. I did not want kisses in the rain even as much as I loved to tell that story. I didn't want it because I didn't want to come to expect the thing I knew one day would just be a story on a blog. I didn't want disappointment. And I was trying to avoid it by not wanting anything, really.

The problem with apathy is that your life demands that you swim. You cannot float or tread to happiness, you must swim to it feverishly and intentionally, and you arrive without it moving. At best you stay within the sun's reach of joy but you will never rest in it completely without work to stay there. In my decision to develop indifference to love, I lost myself. It was temporary but it derailed so much.

I felt...so hurt. How could he not fight for it? For us? How is this happening again? That was the loudest echo. I had a panic attack one day when I had the overwhelming feeling that, the only reason people leave you is because you're not good enough to stay around for. I looked at my thighs that touch nearly down to the knee. I looked at my calves which used to be strong and muscular and are now just burdens for boot season. I skimmed my shape and decided I liked it I just wished there was less. And I hated I thought that thought. Like so many times before, I made my Body the reason I wasn't good enough. Only this time the words felt like poison on my to skin and I began to expel them as soon as they landed on each wrinkle, dent, crevasse, and stretchmark. And then I broke. It was my sharp inhale. It was the realization of what I was doing and of what I was allowing my thoughts to control in my life. It was me screaming at myself that "YOU CAN SWIM!"

And the today when he spoke of sex, I realized that a life without passion is the life of an animal. I am an animal, sure, but I am so much more than that too, I am also a human being and that means I get the opportunity to do be and evolve. To choose. To fight. To love. To hurt and to learn lessons slowly if ever at all. I stopped telling myself "you should know better" and I looked at where I was. I asked myself if what I had was what I asked for, and if it was really what I wanted. Was my disregard for emotion really my way to avoid connection? Well of course it was, but could I get past that?

When he spoke it dawned on me that I am someone who makes love. I do not callously penetrate possibilities for my own selfish gain. I seek connection. I cherish intimacy. I engage fully and wholly. I am a lover, I need to be loving. I need to be actively loving and making love as many times as I can to as many things as possible. And so, pun very much intended, I began my strokes.

Swimming. Fighting for my life and deciding that the desires of my heart are worth having because I wouldn't want them otherwise. I decided to stop apologizing. To be vulnerable but not broken. To be open but not naïve. And I decided to get to work at the business of living.

We are here for a reason. I don't think we are meant to be alone. I think our partners can change and fluctuate depending on what we need in those moments of relationship. I do believe that there is no mistake he was here, is here, so that I might have arrived at this place.