Photo by Robert Couse - Baker
I grew up near two rivers: the Sacramento and American River. Each year there was always someone who misjudged the placid surface, even slight movement of water swirling, creating an ease, an ebb and flow was misleading. You are taught early on to pay attention to the signs of what the river is telling you. Once I remember stepping out too far, and for a split second my foot was being pulled away from me. A dead tree was the thing I grabbed onto. The entire event lasted seconds, but the power behind having no control, being at the mercy of outside forces, terrified me. The other thing you learn about the river is that if you ever do get caught in the undertow, don't fight it. You have to go with it and the water will eventually spit you back out upon the surface, somewhere, at some point. Not only is this an unnatural thought, but instinctively our bodies fight and panic sets in.
Life is border-line undertow (river) mixed in with a rip current (ocean) and while the signs are all there sometimes you never see it coming. Only when one is drowning or about to drown does that quiet voice in the back of one's head boom loudly "let go." There have been times in my life where I had the choice to fight or to acquiesce, I usually fought and fought hard because the idea of putting down my sword was considered weakness (my point of view for a long time). Fighting is a far more noble decision, but one that will kill you in the end. Now I am not saying take what slams you lying down, on the contrary, fight to point where the water sweeps you off your feet and is about to pull you under then let something else carry you downstream, or out into the ocean, where you are able to arrive at a soft spot. A place were the waves or the currents gently caress you instead of lashing out at you. There is such a break in the psyche when we give up. It is a foreign arena where everyone is watching, but no can help you as the choice, to stop being at war with a losing battle, is up to you.
It happened and it happened with such rapidity (a word Jules Verne used one too many times in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and one I never thought I would ever use in a sentence, but like the old saying goes, never say never) that it jolted me to the core. I have a good friend who nicknamed me the Kraken and for good reason (he even made me a birthday workout one year and called it The Kraken, it was kind of brutal). A sea monster that would attack a ship, wrapping its arms and tentacles around the boat, capsizing it, destroying the vessel while killing and eating the crew on board (how I do love the drama of a story).The Kraken is not unlike my life. While not as extreme, I most definitely have struggle to the end with the last man (person) standing, to win an invisible conflict where there would be only one victor. It is both my strength and my Achilles heel. I was taken by such surprise, I thought for a moment that is was not real, possibly a joke. I know me, I know how I grew up, I know where I came from. My need to understand "why" stopped, that burn to be relentless in the comprehension of the "reasons" came to a halt. There was a cease fire within my body. When my father died twenty years ago, I searched endlessly, to comprehend, to bargain for more time, to turn back the clock. I begged, prayed, screamed, I didn't understand.
Photo by Kelley McAuliffe
Where land meets sea is the place I now stand, in the middle, between my past and my future lies my present. The center divider will never allow those two paths to cross, to forever be separated by the breath I breathe in this very moment. I can no longer look back nor can I look ahead, neither serves me in ways that are productive. "It is was it is" used to bother me. As harsh as it sounds, there is a release and a freedom in surrendering to the truth of the moment not what I wish for, not what could be. Linkin Park wrote the lyrics Every step I take is another mistake to you/ Caught in the undertow, just caught in the undertow. I have come to completely accept that every step I have taken has not been a mistake, but for years I did think that very thing, which kept me in the never ending cycle of the horrendous push-pull, the back-n-forth, the very thing that keeps one stuck in a place of no growth, no movement, no change.
It's new, this pleasure of the gentle, the soft, to roll in a cloud of down, feathers floating through the air like a snow drift. I would imagine it might take a little time to acclimate, there are treasures that await me, unexpected riches in life for me to discover, but maybe, just maybe, some of those fortunes are buried at the bottom of the sea protected by the Kraken. Oh, let's not get it twisted, shall we. For better or for worst she (that deep sea creature) will always be a part of me, only now, I don't feel the need to release her, not the way I once did.
Kelley McAuliffe is a writer living in Los Angeles, she's obsessed with CrossFit and sharks and dinosaurs.