Drown Today, Swim Tomorrow
On feelings and letting things pass
You woke up angry today.
Annoyed.
Lie still for a moment. Let it sit on your chest before you decide what to do with it.
It’s about that text you received.
How can you be angry when you haven’t read it yet.
It’s the name that appeared.
It’s the reminder of things that were said to your face. Things meant as truths but landed as disappointments.
Don’t reach for the phone just yet.
Wait for your feelings to settle.
Or you might write something you regret later.
Why must you think.
Why must you feel so deeply.
You sometimes wish you could go about life in the shallows, like many people you know.
And sometimes you tell yourself you’d rather live in the deep.
The depth from which you sometimes feel engulfed.
A sentence that has appeared in your thoughts for many years now: what a lonely existence, that of a thinker.
Now you want to change that sentence.
What a lonely existence, that of a feeler.
Do you feel?
How do you feel?
What do you feel?
Your psyche has been restless.
For weeks, vivid dreams.
Things you thought were lost.
Feelings suppressed.
People appearing from the past, uninvited.
Why now?
What changed?
Nothing changed.
A pushing to find resolution, for scenarios you never wrote.
What will you do now?
Nothing.
Allow your psyche to roam wild.
Something will come out of this.
Anger today.
Sadness tomorrow.
Something always comes out eventually.
And you always learn.
You grow.
You get up and start preparing breakfast.
The anger is still there, quieter now, sitting somewhere behind your ribs while you fill the kettle.
You suddenly decide to read the text. You are curious after all. Feelers usually are.
It’s a simple message of appreciation.
You reply with a few polite words, then you contemplate.
Your anger dissipates.
Where did it go?
You don’t know.
Maybe it left through the open window.
You know it will come back.
If not soon, it will come back later, in your dreams.
You pick up your phone again. Engage in conversation with no strong feelings at the surface.
That’s better for you.
You can go with the flow for now.
Drown in it tomorrow.
Swim the day after.
Such is life.
Such are feelings.
The anger here is real, but it does not entirely belong to the unread message. The name awakens an older story, and the body begins preparing a response before the present has had an opportunity to speak.
I appreciated the wisdom of the pause...not suppressing the feeling or shaming it, but also not making it responsible for the next action. The anger is allowed to sit behind the ribs while the kettle is filled. Then the message is read, and reality interrupts what memory had already begun writing.
Perhaps the feeling was not false. It was simply early, arriving with information from another time.
And I love that you do not end with permanent calm. Sometimes we drown. Sometimes we swim. Neither condition lasts forever.