Because I slept I woke with less chaos? I dreamt. I remember it had a lot of details but don’t remember any of the details except the last part where I was in like a men’s lounge and they were all testing strange hard liquors and I started dumping them all out. And they laughed and laughed and laughed this jovial men laugh as I would dump them out and they automatically filled back up.
I started swimming again. When I have in the past I usually sleep exhausted. I lay down early and feel just exhausted. I was able to do my whole mile on the first day back but my chest felt like I had been swimming a mile. I felt like a fish out of water. I do a bunch of strange stroke rhythm things. I will breath every third, alternating sides, every eighth on just one side, every single stroke and sometimes I try and swim the entire length without breathing. In my head I want really strong lungs. For what? Scuba diving, which doesn’t make any sense since I won’t be holding my breath the entire time or even coming up every three seconds to breath.
I think I think it is training my lungs just to breath. To control the breathing. But that’s my mind. My mind tells my lungs what to do not my lungs just know what to do? That’s a question. Lungs have to be told what to do. Or mine do anyway. I have to tell myself to take deep breaths above water and sometimes I have to tell myself, which is really my lungs to hold my breath for no reason. I’m not telling me I’m telling them. When I’m swimming I say come on lungs hold the air in there you can’t breath under water we are not fish. Just a fish out of water. Why I think this will help me with scuba diving I don’t know. I feel like my natural instinct is going to say don’t breath under water lungs we aren’t fish. And I will hold it as long as I can then panic when I finally can’t anymore then have to surface to breath because I won’t be able to breath under water.
Im not planning to scuba dive soon but I am planning to scuba dive someday soon. I want to go into the really cold Lake Superior. Im not sure I want to see under the ocean. It seems too deep. I want to see the shipwrecks in the Lake not all the coral reefs and amazing fish of the deep sea. I won’t want to come up. And since I can’t hold my breath forever I shouldn’t go below the ocean. Just a big cold lake. For now.
I planned flowers for my brother in laws funeral service. It’s all I know to do. Make things pretty. For who? After I spent the morning trying and failing to use an app to plan to swim then finally calling and telling them I can’t figure the app out. I ask if I can call and make a time which she then says, it’s easier if you use the app. I say easier for who? But she just laughs. Tells me to unload and reload the app that it has kinks still. That’s doesn’t sound easier for me. So I ask again. Can’t you just put me in the computer? She tells her lungs to deep breath and agrees. Then I ask if she can just put me in for the whole week. Then she says lots of people just call and do it this way. Then I tell my lungs to deep breath. To prepare to swim. To prepare to say goodbye to my brother in law who I didn’t actually get to say goodbye to and I don’t know who I’m saying goodbye to now. There is no brother in law now.
I don’t have to make it so hard. I was told it doesn’t have to be. And it doesn’t. It was with my dad and I found myself in a place now that it’s not as hard. Maybe not as hard is the wrong words it’s just what it is. It is still hard i am just kind of ok with the hard. He died when the whole world was chaos. If it hadn’t been what would I have done? It would have been harder? Harder to get used to just him gone and not all the just new things that are now. I found comfort in the fact Im relieved he died when he did. Comfort in really uncomfortable.
We have not had a service for my dad. We couldn’t then can’t and now it seems we don’t want to. My mom doesn’t want it to be final?. But it is. I don’t need a service. It’s been long enough that I’ve gotten to my own place. Found comfort in uncomfortable. Learned to breath better above water and now need to breath better below. So I can breath better below not just above. Fish don’t get to learn to breath above water. They are fish from water. We get to learn to breath below. Like people in water.
I would love to take his boat on top of water fill it full of flowers and let it go boat one last time. But it won’t be the last time and it won’t be ever again with him so it seems ridiculous. I should just take the boat more times than a last time. Plus it would go boat all alone and I would have to go fish his boat out that I sent out without a boater.
I like someone. Like really like them. I haven’t really liked someone since I did once a half a life ago and then my half of life stopped when he stopped really liking me. Just stopped. People do. I wait for it. I have not had someone really like me since then either. Not anyone I believed really did. It’s just risky. It is at a place that can decide if it can be a place. We have traveled the country together, been lost, been not lost, talked, walked, slept, and now it’s now. I really like him. Now what? Now nothing? Now just take a day at a time and do nothing? Do you just do nothing now? Now is time to just see? I can’t make him like me back now. It is just where it is. I can’t be anymore than I am. I am worried it won’t be enough and also if I’m not then it’s what it is. I’m not really worried I’m just over thinking it. Not really over . thinking but a little because now I really like him. So what now?
When I first started to swim I thought I would drown. I hadn’t swam before and before I swam I just liked being on top of water in a boat. And would panic at the thought of not being on top of the water on a boat. But one day I just needed to know how to swim. Nothing specific happened I just saw deep water in the pool when I walked by at the school my daughter was at and decided I want to jump in that. I had to restrain myself from doing it right then. I wasn’t even supposed to be in that part of the building to retrieve my daughter but worked at the university and was working right by the pool. When I first saw it it was as if I had never seen a pool which was ridiculous. I had seen lots of pools. Even ones with deep water but something about that moment said you need to be able to get into this deep water. I like to get into deep water. Except the ocean. Too deep. Too big. I would fall in love. Stay away from things too deep. Too risky?
I don’t have a fear of water or a fear of drowning. Quite the opposite. I worried I would drown since I lacked the skills not to but not a fear. I am afraid I will fall in love with it. Always need to be in it. Always need to find water to be in. Always want and need to swim. I am afraid to fall in love. I’m glad I’m not a fish. They can just go to the one fish place they are. They don’t get to get legs and walk around looking for more water. They are stuck in the water they were somehow born in. I don’t like seeing a fish in really small water. I want to intervene and take them to bigger deeper water. I’m like my daughter who likes to play with her fish. We think fish are bored and need entertained. That they need us to involve ourselves in what makes them happy. I’ve never moved a fish. I’ve just thought about it.
Im a little like a fish out of water right now. Just kind of struggling to breath above water. Flopping around on land looking for water to practice breathing below so I can someday breath below water. I am uncomfortable in a situation because it is unfamiliar. Is that how a fish really feels out of water? How do we know? Are they uncomfortable or curious? Do fish feel curious or even uncomfortable? Do fish feel anything? Angry? Sad? Love? Do they worry about people in water? Do they say? Look at that people out of air? What are their fish brains telling them when they are out of water? To breath? Breath what? When we are on water we are telling ourselves not breath water. To hold our breath. So when they are out of water are they also holding their breath? They probably just feel like they can’t tell their little fish brains to breath air since it’s not water since they are a fish out of water.
Aspenleaf 