Distance

I have been single for almost a month now. I think I have had enough distance to be able to honestly discuss parts of it. To be honest, I don’t know if people want to read about it, but like everything else, you are free to surf away from this post. I don’t want to go into the nitty gritty of what happened or finger point or name call. I just think it is important for me to write about it even if it is just for myself.

When I was probably six I was swimming at a friend’s house and there were several other kids in the pool. I was a pretty decent swimmer but I stayed near the edge of the pool when I was swimming in the deep end. I didn’t cling to the edge, but I didn’t feel comfortable swimming away from the side. One of the older kids was trying to help and convinced me to swim away from the edge. I swam from one side to the other a few times, always underwater not on the surface like normal kids, without much incidence. I got braver and swam around in the middle for a few minutes. When I tried to surface I was under one of the other kids in an inner-tube and I was trapped under the water for just a few seconds. I remember the panic and finally surfacing and desperately gasping for air. I was never in any real danger but the panic was enough to leave me breathless with darkness encroaching on the edges. I will always remember that feeling of pure, gasping, panicked struggle. I hadn’t felt that way again until I got home from Florida.

At first everything was a desperate treading of water trying to understand what had just had happened to me. I retreated far within myself and decided that I would not be able to make sense of anything at first so I simply felt my emotions and made note of them. I felt like a biologist observing a selina in her natural emotional habitat. As I started to sort stuff out, I realized that what happened was really for the best but I had to promise to let myself feel it.

For fifteen months, I had built a life for myself with another person. I had become Selina in a Relationship and I started building a future based around that. When the relationship ended, that version of Selina in a Relationship died along with that life and future I had built. For better or worse, a lot of things changed for me. My natural instinct has always been to pretend I was okay and try to solider it through. Thank freaking God that I had enough sense not to try it this time. I realized, I think with the help of my amazing friends, that I needed to allow myself to feel this. I have to mourn the end of everything I had felt, built, and planned. I need to learn what Single Selina is again.

In the beginning I was trying to survive the moments of feeling so much pain that I felt part of me curl into a ball deep inside of myself while the pain overwhelmed me threatening to burst out of my skin. There were so many times I just wanted a break from my own mind for a bit. I am not saying I wanted to die, I just wanted to not think for a bit. I realized fairly early on that my best chances of surviving this required me to stop, take stock of where I was, and to make a plan for moving forward, so I made a plan. I haven’t been working as diligently as I should on that plan as I should. I have been slacking a bit but I am still trying to plod forward. Even in the beginning, I knew that if I tried to move forward things would get better, I am also trying to not get too upset with myself about not being healed and for not getting everything done right now. Just keep swimming.

A month out, I feel the moments of swelling pain far less. I feel less like my skin is one large angry scrape that screams at any touch. I see the things that I can learn from everything. I tell myself that I am a better stronger person from the experience. Sometimes it is a comfort, sometimes I roll my eyes at the thought feeling it is a cold comfort. The strangest thing is the odd moments that the gasping panic hits me. The other day I was at a stoplight and it hit me when I got hit with that feeling I had in that pool. I was surprised by it but after a few seconds it passed.

I have no clue what happens next. I know I want to keep moving forward, so forward I plod along.