safe again.
sometimes i let myself stop. just stop. and let the feeling of existing overwhelm me. tonight, i am overcome by how i came to be at the place i am right now. everything. am i happy here? there are things i wish i could change emotionally... i romanticize the past me... she used to be stronger... didn't she? more sure? i don't remember loneliness like its present incarnations... strange how i was never this lonely until i fell in love for the first time... and then became seemingly incapable of feeling completely whole ever again.

i went body-surfing for the first time over a decade ago on a family vacation in bermuda. i can remember my dad and sister in the ocean with me... laughing, jumping... the excitement of a big wave coming up... seeing how long you could balance with it... letting it carry you... then i felt something i had never experienced before. and it shocked my system. it was the first time i felt a force overpower my limbs like that. it grabbed hold of me and flung me about. i remember the sand swirling everywhere... i can still taste the gulps of salt water... i panicked. underwater right there, i understood what it felt like to believe that i wasn't ever going to breathe again. i was disorientated... unable to figure out which way was up and which way was the ocean floor. the split second it took me to find my way above water stretched out for an eternity.

but i made it back up. i remember swallowing air again. no one had noticed my brief absence. my sister was still laughing... my dad riding waves. my little shaken body made its way over to his confident one... and i managed to replay my experience. he nodded knowingly and simply said... "that was the undertow."