learning to swim

A long time ago I decided I wanted to write a book. I wanted to write about growing up as a pastor's kid and how my childhood was good, but I experienced things most people would never see. Obviously, I never wrote the book, but all the stories are still there. I think at the time I first started thinking about writing I wasn't ready to tell my story. I still don't know if I'm ready to tell it. The problem is I don't have an ending. I'm still in the midst of my story.

A few years ago I came up with a name for my book. "Learning to Swim". It comes from an Ani Difranco song called "Swim".

I was floating above myself
Watching her do just what you wanted
Poor little friendly ghost
Wondering why her whole house feels haunted
I told myself I was strong enuf
That I had plenty of blood to give
And each elbow cradled a needle
But listless and faint ain't no way to live

So I hope I never see
The ocean again
Pushing and pulling at me
As I go deeper and deeper in
Til I'm so far from my shore
So far from what I came here for
I let you surround me
I let you drown me
Out with your din
And then I learned how to swim

I remember hearing the song shortly after the most devastating experience of my life I don't know if I had heard it before that time or not, but this time something clicked. I was the one who needed to learn how to swim.

I don't know how to explain why this particular experience was so devasting to me other than to say I felt like I had been attacked from all sides. People who were supposed to be my friends, people who said they really cared about me turned on me. For what felt like no reason at all. Quite literally we spent time together on Friday and by Sunday they wanted nothing to do with me. Talk about a blow to the ego. Eventually, I heard some of the reasoning behind this whole ordeal, it didn't help. I always think that if I just know why people do what they do it will be better but it's not. Knowing that they didn't feel there was anything of value about me stung. It's hard to recover when everything about you as a person has been attacked and it wasn't attacked by someone you didn't know. I was attacked by people who knew me well. People that I had a lot of respect for, that I looked up to and I didn't know how to react.

I didn't know what to do so I just cried a lot and didn't leave my house. In fact I was so insecure about who I was that I didn't really leave my house for almost a year. It literally took me almost a year to get to the point where I felt like I could be around people again. Now don't get me wrong I did have a few friends that were with me through this whole thing, but the idea of being around anyone new terrified me.

It was during this time that I realized I needed to learn how to swim. I had dealt with things like this before but never to this extent. To continue with the swimming analogy, everytime something like this had happened I was still in the shallow end of the pool with floaties on. This time I had been thrown off the diving board into the deep end of the pool. It was sink or swim. I chose swim.

As I said before I'm still in the midst of my story and I'm still learning to swim. Sometimes I can only manage to doggie paddle, but one of these days I'll master the backstroke.