Sailing Before Swimming

“…People are rivers, always ready to move from one state of being into another. It is not fair, to treat people as if they are finished beings. Everyone is always becoming and unbecoming.” 
― Kathleen Winter, Annabel

The shower was the perfect temperature. Just below the kind of hot that might actually burn, exactly warm enough to calm me. I closed my eyes and leaned back into the stream of water while gratitude washed over me. There are times when the simplest things in life manage to shake me to my core with what it means to be here. Now. With access to running water, and food, and a car, and friends.... all of the things I use on a daily basis that make my life easy. Nearly too easy, and yet somehow, I manage to let that all slip by me and move through the world without thinking.

Today in the shower I thought. I thought about the simple things and then about the deeper things. About how many simple things I take for granted that border on magic, while I've been waiting for magic to appear out of the dust. In relationships, I've existed on the pretense that my love story would happen something like 'love at first sight' or a subway rendezvous with a stranger who took me to a basketball game or.... anything totally random that the universe conspired for me. What I didn't take into account was that maybe romance can be simple too.

That maybe the simple conversations built around sharing our days, and laughing at stupid jokes, and being able to make whatever the heck joke you want to make, might be invaluable. I'm currently talking to a boy who I have no idea what the future holds with. There is no crazy love story pending. There is no future plan. There is no need, or desperation. There is simply the excitement to share the simple pieces of my life with him. 

I have spent a large portion of my life seeking depth, and diving deep, and opening quickly and fully to whomever it was that caught my attention. It was beautiful and wild and as I look back at who I've been, I see a woman who was brave enough to jump in the fire again, and again. I had placed my love in the arms of unsuspecting lovers who simply wanted to exist in this life for me. And as I unravel myself, I can finally see that it is okay.

Swimming in the depths is uncharted territory. The rush of a connection with a stranger is exhilarating. But we are human and we cannot hold our breaths for long enough to live there. If we learn how to sail. To stay afloat breathing in that wild beautiful air while filling our lungs with laughter. We can choose when to dive and when to breathe. We can choose who to dive with and trust that they'll stay as long as they can before swimming back up for air.

For the first time, my emotion has been exhausted. I have been living deeply, on a quest for some connection that may simply take time. And I've learned that it is okay for someone not to know all of me all at once. That I have walls that have taken time to build so that someone can learn how to take them down. And that maybe they'll take them down simply by showing up at the end of the day and asking how I'm doing.

I stepped out of the shower into the nice warm towel from the linen closet. My head full of thoughts, but my feeling, calm and patient. A knowing that whoever it is that loves me next needs to learn how to sail with me before we dive. So that when we dive, we remember, how to come back up.