jellyfish

So many challenges, obstacles, frustrations. I try, often without success, to let them roll off my back. I try to enjoy the brief moments of solitude, the dog smiling, the cats purring and content. I try to enjoy the glimpse of a turtle swimming and diving beside the boat or the wondrous beauty of a moon jelly beside the dinghy, slowly and methodically pulsating through the warm waters. I have long had an affinity for jellies, delicate yet dangerous, translucent and yet mysterious. I would like to add jellies to the seascape tattoo on my back, though unlike jellies, and unlike my beloved seahorses, I do not simply move through life with the tides and currents. Perhaps my life would have been easier if I didn't always swim against the current. But I can't help it; it's in my nature.

The AIS had been giving me warning along the way. I knew the floppy-haired sailor guy would arrive any day now. My plan has long been to shrug it off and avoid any contact, but forewarned is forearmed and better to be able to brace myself for spotting him and then doing a 180 to walk the other way. I think he was cruel but we both let contact fall abruptly and shatter into so many pieces on the floor. There is always blame to go around.

So I had prepared myself, as best one can, for the eventuality of a wayward sighting of him about town. I had not braced myself for a message from him announcing his return and admitting it was crappy to have let contact fall off the way it did. Alas, I overwhelmed him it seems. Don't you feel sorry for that rare man to be smothered by my love? I shouldn't even feel the need to keep the details of our brief correspondence private, but I generally will. My initial response, slightly alcohol-infused, was somewhat terse but fair. In the light of day and being tender hearted, I apologized for being better at expressing my feelings in writing than out loud, which likely hadn't been fair to him. Though he broke my heart I don't see any gain in harping at him about it and it will only drain me to expend my energy hating him. I offered to talk, to ignore each other, or to start a clean slate, and just leave that up to him. I could certainly have never responded at all, but life is short and as hurt as I was I did love him once, even if that affection was flagrantly squandered. I will be skeptical, guard my heart closely for some time after pre-maturely opening myself up to him. But I am glad I took the high road of forgiveness and open doors. But one should never forget. I expect we will ignore each other, but it will then have been of his choosing, not my spite, that did it. 

Oh, to be a seahorse or a moon jelly. To leave worries and feelings behind. To be carried by the whims, caprice, or grace of the sea without tiring oneself swimming upstream or against the swells. Why must it be in my nature always to seek out the struggle?

p.s. Wander over to Sailing on -- single-handed to see a woman facing grief and self-sufficiency head-on. She is certainly one forging her own way, not content to be carried by the tide.