Chapter Nineteen; Drowning

A few weeks before, I'd mentioned to Nick the great progress my little girl is making in her swimming lessons. During the conversation he'd commented offhandedly, “Can you believe some people don’t know how to swim?”

I hesitated.

I grew up on a land locked farm in Boonieville, where the only concentrations of H20 is found in low lying areas that trap run off. These murky muddy sloughs don’t even qualify as ponds; they’re more like mud puddles on crack. There is a fresh water lake in the town nearby but my busy farming parents didn’t have time to take my siblings and me there often during our redneck upbringing. Besides, when we did go that place was so foul we always ended up with “the itch” after splashing around in it for an afternoon. (If you’ve never experienced “the itch” you really haven’t lived. Let me tell ya.)

As a result.

I can’t swim.

Well, I can dog paddle. Okay, that’s a generous description. What I do is more like wild flailing of the limbs. It can’t be categorized as swimming. It’s just desperate anti-drowning motion, really.

And now here I am just a few weeks out from that conversation about swimming. Sitting at my desk, a sobbing wreck of myself reading this email from Nick.

Drowning.

In disbelief.

Of course, I write back.

But my thoughts are not well thought out thoughts. My words not well chosen words. Because come on, I am bawling, an activity rarely synonymous with dignity.

“I trusted you. I jumped. I jumped right into this lake of insanity because it felt so safe with you. But now, you are swimming back to shore without me. Knowing full well. That I can’t even swim.”

I punch the words out on my keyboard.

Flailing away. Trying to stay afloat.

But Nick doesn’t come to my rescue. His big strong arms do not pull me to the surface. Or throw me a life preserver.

And in his absence.

I sink.

For he doesn’t reply.

Not then.

Not ever.

For the next five days the silence is deafening. The only noise my own stifled sobs. Muzzled by the fact that I don’t have the luxury to be sad when I want to be sad; I have two kids who need me, whose world depends on my stability.

So I smile. Mute my emotions.

And carry on.

But every time I am alone. In the shower. Driving my car. In my bed.

I cry.

And while I do. I wait. For a call. A text. An email. For some sign that I didn’t just imagine the last six weeks of my life.

I miss him so much. Doesn’t he miss me? Isn’t he feeling this enormous empty hole?

Every time I hear a Harley on my street I run to my window like a dismal shadow of my strong self.

It isn’t him.

It’s never him.

But through it all I am hardly alone. In fact, I am flooded with love.

Because every day they text. Every day they call. Every day they email.

Are you okay? How are you doing today? Would you like to have lunch?

They are my saviors. My angels. My calvary.

My friends.

They circle the wagons of their hearts around mine. Take me out for a “break up dinner.” Naomi christens the gathering with a poem describing what she thinks of Nick’s impromptu departure. And you can only imagine the word she chooses to rhyme with his name.

We drink wine. I cry. They cry too. We drink to mystifying men. To confusion. To heartbreak. To the past. And to the future. To us and how weak we are as individuals, but how strong we are together.

But even with support stronger than a granite girdle.

I end up doing what we girls often do when boys leave us wandering around lost and confused.

I cave.

And collapse like an unstable mine shaft under the weight of this suffocating ambiguity.

I text him.

I think we should talk in person.

I justify that craving a conversation with him is warranted. If it’s going to end I just want to see him. I just want to hear his voice.

I don’t care if its weak.

I just want to know.

What happened?

He replies. My heartbeat suspends.

As I read.

I think a talk is long overdue.