The Oar
Sometimes I dream of water. Of me floating belly up while the cool pools around me. It’s a lake I have been to before. Smoky memories of women giggling and bathing in the cool blue dusk of a summer night, Coors Light cans illuminated by the rising moon- a houseboat docked not far away but far enough for a quiet, private ritual of dove soap and my mothers hands in my hair. I must have been barely nine when I was last there in reality. Earlier that day nearly having drowned because my one man paddle raft tipped over in my youthful vigor and I was too desperate not to lose my oar that I nearly lost my breath. I remember floating tendrils of dead plants underneath the water looking like a child’s hand reaching out to me. It was so lifelike it startled me into letting go of my oar- the sudden loss of weight projecting me back up into the bright blue of the summer day and back into oxygen my lungs could break down. My uncle pulling my back into the boat and my mothers fingernails cutting into my shoulders and telling me that that if something was weighing me down to, for Godsake girl, LET IT GO. To this day I have trouble with that advice. To this day I find myself sinking further down until something startles me into letting go of the weight I didn’t realize I had such an iron grip on.
It’s always obvious once I unclench my fingers but I never seem to see it until the burden has been lifted. I choke on my insecurities until my insecurities are the ones to give up. The world cannot beat me because I inevitably beat the world up first.
I have a constant terror that masks itself as bravery. I speak my mind with an ever growing conviction that my words will be misconstrued- that I will be misconstrued- or even worse. Seen through. That someone will see past what I am on the cool dusky blue surface and into what’s is lurking underneath. They aren’t bad, my demons. I hold little to no ill will although I find myself hissing insults into my mirror sometimes to my own image and the images I envision of others. Telling my imaginary foes what I really think of them- whoever they are in that moment. I don’t really know my demons but I know I don’t like them. They leave a shadowy blankness in their wake, choking me worse than the desperation of not letting go of that oar, not damaging someone else’s property, of not damaging someone else. They leave a deep fear that somehow I am less important.
I long to be back in that open water again with those women and fear deeply of being tossed back into the stillness of what lies beneath the surface. I yearn for those fingers washing my hair and tremble at the ones reaching up from the bottom. How do you know when to let go? When to stop fighting the oar and allow yourself to float back into the daylight?