Trying something. I’m going to write out my irrational thoughts quickly before I take on an adventure today to try and breath calmly under water while I can’t even do it even above. I was up at 1:00 a.m. with my heart racing a thousand miles a minute. Just beating blood as fast as it can through my body. Why? Why does an anxious mind make the heart race? Why do racing thoughts make blood move quicker? My gums hurt. They are too full of blood from my racing thoughts. My teeth have little room to move and feel like they are floating in their own skin. One is missing and the others have been trying to adjust to life with out their last number 31. Moving and shifting and biting in places they’ve never been bitten before. The one tooth. Number 30? I don’t know how they number teeth. But it seems like it should be 30 but it could be number 29 and the 30 is on top. In a zigzag pattern. Seems wrong. Straight across and left to right like reading a book. Top first then the bottom. I’m guessing. Next to it was messed around with and chipped in the process of losing his partner who did most the work for him now is working extra hard to chew food carefully to protect sensitive blood pooling gums. But now I have an even number of teeth. So that’s good? Or it’s bad since I’ve lost so many to get to this number from them all banging into each other for half my life. They crack themselves from each other. They feel like they are really floating today. On a day i need them to feel in place and secure without their number 31. Not like a crevice is about to open and out will pour all my blood that pooled from my heart moving my blood so fast that the pool will fill with pooling blood and I won’t be able to see the red because colors look weird under water. It would be pink anyway. Just a little blood. Not a lot. It’s just a tooth adjusting to new life not really a crevice opening. I feel like my last updated version of my phone isn’t as smart. I feel like they have programmed them now to make us really think of words. It doesn’t pick up on the words we try to type fast like it used to. I could almost get a word typed from a racing thought and it would guess what word my mind was trying to quickly get out. Now either it can’t keep up with me today or phones are getting dumber so we can get smarter again.
What am I really afraid of? What was trying to torment me with thoughts yet came out as racing hearts and blood. I can’t seem to get to the core of it. I usually can nail it down pretty quick to what it is. It is irrational for sure. No doubt whatever has tickled my brain has little reason to be doing it. Isn’t that what tickling really is? There is no good reason to tickle someone. You might say to make them laugh? But it’s not always funny and doesn’t always tickle. Especially when you are tickly enough for them all. We real tickly people don’t actually need to be tickled. Or made to laugh. We do it to ourselves. Tickle someone who isn’t ticklish or says they aren’t anyway. It’s surprising to them. Is ticklish ones are aware and will fight the tickles. It won’t make us laugh it will haunt us on our dreams when our brain rests.
I think I’m worried about what will come out of my mouth when talked to. Maybe even if asked why I’m there. What would I say? How do you say what you don’t know? How do you say I don’t know? How do you not say it too? How do you say it’s actually very simple. It’s that deep rooted trust Im seeking. How can I find it if I don’t look everywhere and turn every stone. Not that I’m going to pick up stones under water and look but I’m going to look real deep under water and see if it’s a place I may be able to find it. Without my dad and even before I didn’t know where to look and even how. Or if to. I didn’t even know I was missing something. Missing? Is that the right word for a lack of trust in yourself? I don’t know that I’m missing it. I’m not hearing it? Seeing it and then feeling it? And I can’t touch it. It’s not something to touch. It’s that thing I have to believe in that isn’t a thing. It’s not an object I dropped and lost and will just pick up and put back in place like a barrette that has fallen.
This is such a personal private journey that I don’t want to even say why. I can’t breath often above water. I forget to. Maybe it will be easier to breath in a way and place we are told to not? Maybe it will be calming to be forced to control my breathing so I don’t panic and explode a lung. Or to be told to listen close so you can remember to adjust pressure so your teeth don’t hurt. Or listen when he says to add weights so you maintain stabilized space in water. Maybe it’s to listen when he says to stop or go. Or not to. Or dont. To listen when you tell yourself to stop or go or not to or don’t. It’s to listen.
The irrational fears of dying, teeth exploding, my lung exploding, my airways getting water in them, my eyeballs exploding. I’m not even sure why everything is exploding in my mind with this. I’m not going to die. Or i am. But I don’t know what good it will do me to think I am if I could anyway just getting to the pool to learn to scuba dive. That’s my story? She died on her way to the place she was so afraid of dying to go to. Disclaimer: by dying to go to we mean she was dying to go there not really afraid of dying when there. Just so afraid of even going to a place I’ve been dying to learn to do. She almost made it. Until she died getting there. It’s not going to happen or it could. But thinking it won’t stop it or create it. I have no control of when I die. Not if when. Dad is dead and that’s the reality. I will die and this is also true. Will it be today doing something I’m so afraid to do? Maybe. Does it make me more afraid knowing it could? No answer.
I am afraid of what will come out of my mouth. What will I say? How will I listen? Who am I listening to now? I can’t quite hear that tiny little quiet voice like I once did but barely did before it got lost in grief. It was so close to being heard. I was so close to being able to hear myself for once. Not all the noise but myself. I was so frustrated getting to this place. I tried too hard for so long to manipulate a process that isn’t in my hands. I tried everything I could to make things work. Then they all fell apart. Then I put them all back together on my own and found a place that I felt I could sit and listen to this little tiny voice that was talked over for so long only to have it drowned out once again. By the one thing that I’m supposed to be listening to. The universe. It was messed with and it messed back. And now my teeth are floating all around in my bloody mess.
I pushed my body and mind in a way I’ve never done before. I am trying to learn to breath under water. Scuba dive. I’m not even real sure why. I told him I was trying to learn to trust myself more. And I wanted to see shipwrecks in cold water. And rescue people in water lost. Which isn’t a rescue. It’s a find a body. Why would I want to find bodies? A recovery? But maybe rescue other divers? I want to calm my mind. I want to see tropical fish. Maybe the mussels growing on the ships in cold water. Not sure. I want to see shipwreck under water. But in cold water. Oh, I said that. Mostly I am curious. I just want to try it. I’m not sure why. I’m looking for something. My dad died. I want to trust myself again. In cold water. Did I say cold water? Oh I said that too. What haven’t I said? Nervous laughter.
It was very peaceful once they quit making us try things that scared me to death. The things I will need to know so I don’t actually die being scared. they are necessary training exercises. They are hard. They require zero error. They require me to listen but then to watch. They can’t talk under water so they talk with their hands so I have to watch. But first listen. Then not die. My head is pounding from breathing in a way I don’t. My nose is sore from having water in it, my eyes burn but didn’t explode in my mask making me picture I would need a new mask because mine has an eyeball in it. Nothing I worried about happened except everything I thought would happen happened. My tooth hurt when we got to the deep end. They felt like they were floating. Probably still in my pooling racing thoughts from my wild heart beats. We scooted slowly to the end and held our noses and blew pressure from our ears real slow but I bit down real hard on my regulator and hit the tooth next to the 31 that is gone and it hurt so bad I wanted to scream but I couldn’t and was under water. I saw for a second my teeth float away as my lungs filled with water. But none of that happened. The pool didn’t open up into a big crevice shifting of walls to expose teeth floating in the pool. It was a dream. I didn’t really see the reef walls move and turn into teeth. That’s the thing of nightmares when your subconscious gets to play when you finally sleep after months of tooth pain, scuba, and tooth relief. The brain is funny, like tickle my funny bone funny. When it gets to rest it doesn’t. It does what it wants and I get to wake in confusion. I almost would rather not sleep then to let my brain do what it wants. I woke in a panic stricken sweat of tangled sheets. One might say I should medicate to sleep but one would be wrong to suggest I let something control my mind that isn’t me but is me but is actually not because I got a break for a night. Anyway, my teeth weren’t floating or exploding. So I signaled to go up and we swam nice and slow back to the shallow end and then I came up. So at least I didn’t panic. But I almost did. Once I finish this I will never want to dive with anyone but these two men. Who will I trust to tell me to breath in nice and slow and out. I’ll have to do it myself. That’s why I’m here. There? Under water breathing so I can breath easier not under water. I can’t breath in my nose under water. That’s how a mask works. It doesn’t. It protects this precious airway from water and makes you use your mouth. But I use my nose to calm me when my mouth won’t do it. I will need to sit and meditate and practice not breathing with my nose. It’s all in my head. It all was. Except the tooth thing. That happened and I said it would and wasn’t shocked when it did but shocked it happened when it did because it hadn’t happened yet so I quit thinking it would then it surprised me like a little test at 12 feet if I would rise in panic or rise in calm. I didn’t rise in panic. Even though I thought for a minute let’s just pop up and get me this thing from my mouth. I am not easy to sink. Because I don’t keep air in and out like others. I breath in and never let the air all the way out and then breath back in hard. The bubbles bothered me. So I just didn’t make them a what does this mean for above water breathing I’m not properly exchanging my gases? I don’t let all my air out? But then I kept surfacing. They kept weighing me down with weights and my legs go all wild and I kick like a little kicker and can’t stay still. I felt like I was being forced to stay under water when my lungs say lets not exchange air right and make you float. But they want me to sink so I can exchange air below air. But I haven’t tricked my tickles yet. He held me down once, with just a finger. Once Had to hold my legs still for one of the tests. My legs like to move not stay floating. My body and mind don’t work well in situations they don’t know. I will be processing this chaos of an idea for a few days. I can not even make a paragraph. It’s all a streaming thought as one big thought because right now I don’t know what the fuck I am doing this for!! At least I said once I finish and not if. I didn’t even catch it to correct it. I remember typing it. I’m leaving it the first thought of a thousand that will follow. The thoughts will slowly get swallowed up in the crevice that has clearly opened into a fear so deep I can’t seem to float out of it. It won’t happen. I won’t let it. I’ll perfect it and get it. I’ll redo and test myself to be certain. I’ll surround myself with people who can move their arms in and out in a breath in and our motion and make me look at their eyes and see while also surrounding myself with those who are more afraid than me so I can do it back. Breath in and out. Wave my arms to calm someone else. Which will help me get out of my own cracked open floating tooth crevice of a bloody mess I made of pooling self doubt.
Aspenleaf 