It wasn't nearly enough. Time just erases itself when I'm down there. All my fear, worries, angst...everything stays on the surface. Everything is so simple, so contained...

Supposedly sound travels approximately 4 times faster and is louder underwater...but all i hear is silence. The hustle and bustle of life is gone. It's more than just gone...it doesn't exist at all and never did or will again. 

I've discovered something...after being below for a while, i can't even remember that I'm in an alien environment. I can clear my mask of water and not even realize that I'm not in my natural environment. My bite on the regulator loosens, my body relaxes, and I'm home. It doesn't matter that when I leave the water I know I'm not meant to be down there...man's place is above water, not below it. It doesn't matter that I have to go home, wash all my gear with me as I take a shower, cook dinner, amuse myself until it's time to go to sleep, then wake up and go to work. It doesn't matter that I am leaving that serenity behind...

Because I realize...i don't really know how to word it...I realize..._something_. Part of it is the knowledge that peace is so close at hand, that life is a wonderful thing, that my issues WILL resolve themselves, and yet there's more that I can't quite put my finger on. I weep at not being able to describe exactly how I feel. I couldn't even guarentee that other divers feel this same way...it's obvious all of us share at least SOME of these symptoms...but that indescribable one? It's better than drugs...at least, it's better than any of the drugs I've ever had!

Every time I surface I realize that tomorrow is another day, and I will once more return to the folds of the sea. Everything in between becomes just a way to pass the time until then.

When I am on SCUBA...things don't have to make sense. I don't have to question. I don't have to think...I can just be. Perhaps it's just as simple as that...I can just _be_. 

I don't know. I don't really need to know. It's too magical.

So TODAY...All day. ALL day, that girl was in my head. I found myself cycling through her in all the various outfits she wore. I imagined her in every setting, laughing, smiling, whatever. I thought of the platonic hug we shared and dwelled on whether it was more than I thougth it was...Work was crazy. I was the only one in the PAC office for a large portion of the day and I had to puzzle through so many issues it made my heaed spin...I suddenly had to learn other people's filing systems (seems no-one's heard of MARKS!)...and...everything. I didn't have a whole lot of luck. My body kind of felt shut down during PT this morning. I had trouble getting otu of bed even though I went to bed farely early. I found myself napping in the strangest moods after PT and at lunch. I had to explain something I didn't want to have to explain to the Staff Judge Advocate...because I knew that if i got those questions I wouldn't be able to answer them to his satisfaction...and that girl was in my head. Everytime I opened up Outlook...even KNOWING that it was midnight where she was...i held my breath hoping to see an email from her...ANY email, despite what it said.

And of course...there was more too...

So TODAY...All day...It had the makings of a really fucked up day. It had the makings of a really heart wrenching, fuck you in the ass long, hard, and w/o lube defeatist kind of day. Today was almost one of those kind of days where I really should have stayed in bed...the kind where right NOW I'd be trying to get totally balls to the wall shit faced to forget it all. 

Yet I feel fine. I don't feel the lovesickness that has made me feel so pathetic about myself this last MONTH! Right now I feel so over that girl it's making me light headed. I hold no grudges against the PAC guys on leave or otherwise absent. In fact...right now everything is just peachy. As I type this, I am in the best mood I've been in since I got back to Okinawa...maybe even since leaving Okinawa for that bittersweet seminar.

And it's all because I made one dive today. It's all because, for just one hour, short as it was, all of it dissappeared. All that bad stuff washed off me. I had my therapy at 50 feet. I saw my counselor in Davey Jone's Locker. It was a sailfin, a clownfish, a pufferfish. It was the living corral, the sea urchins, the bottom of the ocean floor. It was knowing, even if only faintly, that everything I needed for survival...I carried it with me on my back and around my waist. 

current mood:  refreshed
current music: Tori 10.23.01  

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