Underwater

People often use the word underwater to describe difficult situations. Stress, pressure, struggle, and failure. For me, those feelings do not align with this word.

Nature, nurture, or both perhaps - I find myself at home underwater. The world is busy. Forces pull in so many directions, and so frequently. It's like being a piece of money it one of those money-tornado box things - you're whipping around all over the place, bouncing off the walls, and someone is always trying to grab you and put you in their pocket. I don't think I belong stuffed in a pocket.

The Calm

Underwater is quiet, its sounds are muted, smooth, and rich. I am pulled by the current, and I flow. Around the hard rocks, above the grainy sand, and shaded from the hot sun.

The water is heavy, dense. The density of it presses gently and evenly on my every surface, giving my physical being a lightness that is otherwise not felt. I cannot breathe, but that does not bother me. I'll get air soon enough. Glitter above, darkness below, I flow between. I am underwater.

The Storm

This dense, powerful water is capable of moving mountains. Storms bring pounding rain, rivers rise, oceans surge, and the underwater world coats the land, stripping it of excess.

Dead and weakened branches, banks of deposited silt, crumbling mountains, seeds that did not root - all are consumed and moved away. Taken by the storm water, and moved to the underwater. There they will be reformed and given new purpose. Homes for wildlife, soft landings, sturdy caves, and lively reefs.

Grit & Glitter

I've weathered powerful storms. Swept away, crawled out, swept away, clawed at the rocks, and swept away. It is unavoidable. It is the nature of our world. It took me a very long time to realize this and now that I have, I am at home in my existence.

I find myself in the present, comfortably underwater after a long sweeping journey away from pieces of the world to which I once felt belonging. I am again a part of the flow. Arms out and gliding, with glitter above, and darkness below.