No Matter Where You Are, I Can Still Hear You When You Drown, You've Traveled Very Far, Just To See You I'll Come Around, When I'm Down

--"Drown", Smashing Pumpkins

We had just finished our "salmon fish" sandwiches that Breanne had packed along as a way to save money when she told me that we should go swimming.

The sandwiches weren't quite the fare I had grown accustomed to on our trip up and down the coast, but saving money was saving money. Also, the making and planning of the picnic was something nice she wanted to do for the both of us. I had gone to the trouble of arranging most of the details and it made it feel like she was contributing to take care of this one meal. Like any extended trip, we had had our ups and downs on this particular one and it was an easy concession to give her.

Part of me wanted to say no simply because the thought of swimming wasn't something I had been looking forward to on that day. In the motel I had told her I would, but the vast part of me was hoping that this would be yet another promise that she'd forget I had made. Either that or I was hoping that she would get far too preoccupied with something else to let me off the hook. I don't know--the whole trip had been a delicate balancing act of convincing one another where to go and what to do. Towards the end we were finding it difficult to disguise our annoyance with one another at parts. I wouldn't say a general animosity had been built up; we were still on more than friendly terms with one another. We had just stopped being as polite as we had begun the trip, again, as is par for the course with any getaway where one is pressed to spend days on end with one another.

"Can't I just skip the swim? I'm not in the mood right now," I asked, hope of a convenient partial amnesia still in my voice.

"You promised, darling," she said as she began to unwrap the towel from around her chest and waist.

No such dice.

She'd taken a short dip in the waves while I had been searching for a suitably close parking space to leave the rental car. We couldn't have been separated more than five or six minutes. Yet in that time she had managed to drop the picnic basket, the towels, and other gear off, and find he way to the water's edge. When I had found her next to the basket the water was already dripping from the chestnut brown tendrils of her head. I had shrugged my shoulders in puzzlement. Then we had eaten.

Her body was still damp in places and it showed brazenly in all the areas where her two piece hadn't bothered to cover. Normally, the sight of her gentle curves and gentle face glowing in the afternoon sunlight would have been enough for me to forgo any notions of resisting her. After all, she had made a career of getting what she wanted on the strength of sheer determination and sheer beauty alone. But, overall, it was a different kind of day that day. I just didn't feel like forsaking my original choice for that of the opportunity to be next to her. I'd been next to her enough in the previous six days. I was finding the thought of being able to be apart from her a refreshing change of pace. We had argued about this earlier on the drive down to the beach, whether or not there was an obligation to do everything together on a vacation. Her point of contention was why would you ever want to go away with someone if you didn't want to spend every waking second with them? My main point was that, as much as I liked spending time with her, it felt false to pretend that I was hanging on her every word or agree with her every sentiment just on principle we were there together. I didn't need her to be within arm's reach every second of the day to still feel like I wanted to be on this trip with her. I only needed to know we were together without actually having to be physically together.

"Ten little 'ole minutes and then you can come right out, I promise," she pleaded, laying her blue and white towel next to where we had laid the food. "Ten little 'ole minutes and then you can just watch me swim out there."

She smiled with those delicately dimpled cheeks of hers. She was really pulling out all the stops. I don't know if the swimming was really important to her in the long run. Having been friends with her for quite a length by that time, I knew the getting her way was important to her. She wanted to win this detente. And when she wanted to win it was almost pointless to argue with her.

She coddled up to me in order to take my hand in hers. I took off my beat-up USC football t-shirt and we made our way to the water. She didn't seem too concerned about the picnic basket or the towels, and everything else was locked up in the car, so she made us take off in a run for the shoreline. Never mind the fact that I very rarely to run my hardest, but I had just eaten and this was supposed to be my vacation. I didn't stop running, but once we reached the water's edge I made it a point to deliberately catch my breath. She took it all in stride, patiently waiting for me to rest up a bit, before she directed us into the water.

Little Miss Chipper has never been the type to wait on anybody. As long as I've known her she's always been the type to boldly strike out on her own and expect people to fall in behind her. She doesn't so much lead as trailblaze. It's one of the aspects of her personality I've always liked about her. It's also one of the aspects that can get on my nerves. On that trip especially, since it was the first time ever we had spent more than three days in each other's company, I was learning that that portion of her brain never shuts off. She's always willing to go just an extra step farther, stay out just an extra hour longer, and exert herself just an extra ounce harder all the time. That's another part of the reason why I didn't want to take that swim with her, to see if it would slow her down any. As I came to find out, it's literally exhausting to be her friend sometimes. It's difficult to be that enthusiastic for as long and as diligently she is all the time.

Especially with me how I am. I never liked to exert myself fully unless it was for something truly important.

Swimming was and never will be among these objectives.

As soon as the frigidness of the water hit my skin I knew I'd blame her for my discomfort. It wasn't fair, but I knew it would be true. The first couple of days on this trip that we had gone swimming I'd been more than accommodating. Hell, there was a huge part of me that relished every second of those first couple of times. It wasn't like she's ever been an eyesore to look at and the scantily clad choice of garments certainly didn't hurt the case. Couple with that with her infectious exuberance and I had been just as impulsive as she had been. We had frolicked both to and fro. We had stayed in the water long enough on both days to prune up quite extensively. We had splashed and splayed and swam till it was too dark and we were too hungry to stay in the water any more. But this time was different. This time I had already had enough. Swimming, at least in the sense she knew it, had lost all sense of fun for me. I was ready to move onto something else and she obviously wasn't. Whereas before the cold sting of the water on my face and shoulder blades I would have found invigorating, this time I just found it overly uncomfortable. Whereas before the idea of spending hours in the water I would have found enjoyable, this time I was finding the idea just exhausting. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up the facade for very long. The water was so cold and my nerves were beginning to fray so abruptly. I would not be able to hold my temper in check for any lengthy period of time, I was sure of it.

"If there's a space between heaven and Earth, I think we're swimming in it. I can't think of anywhere else I'd want to be right now," she said. "I can't imagine that such a place exists, you know?"

I watched her brush the spray out of her eyes, smile ever-present on her lips, and I wondered how she did it. I wondered how she held onto such joy no matter what conditions befell around her. I wondered how she held it together in such a fashion that even I could be taken in by her optimism more often than not. Her thinking was on a whole other wavelength than mine. It existed in a place where people actually could be invincible and where the wings of faith in something better being just around the corner carried you. That was where she lived, where I only got to seldom visit.

I pushed myself into the water to hide my amazement. There was no sense in letting her catch on that my thinking was slightly less benevolent as hers. I was in a mood and I knew it. I was trying hard not to let my annoyance ruin the day. There had already been enough turmoil in the last twenty-four hours. I did not want to see any more.

"Hell's bells, you were down there a long time. Were you trying to swim to Hawaii or something?" she asked as soon as my head cleared the water.

"Maybe."

I heard more than felt her arms wrap around me from behind. In one sense they felt wonderful, like they had always felt. However, in another sense, I knew what they meant. She only did that when she felt something was wrong, when she felt there was something that running headlong would not solve the problem.

"You hate it out here, don't you? You can't even pretend for me right now," she asked, more hurt than anything else. "I can see it on your face. It's as plain as a candle in a room with all the lights shut off."

"I'm sorry. I tried," I offered to her. I tilted my head sideways so it touched where her face was now resting.

"It's okay. I thought the water would be a good thing. I reckoned it would wash some of what's been eating both of us recently. I guess I was wrong."

"It's not your fault. I've just been feeling... off for the last few days. I'll get over it."

I felt her let go of me and her head slip away.

"You want to head back. I'm sure it's been ten minutes."

"If you don't mind."

"Not at all. Swim back and I'll join you after, say, half-an-hour?"

"Sounds like a plan to me."

As I started to make my way back to shore, I thought I was being a jackass about the whole affair. I've never been good at covering up my feelings when decorum dictates that it would be best not to let them show. I've never had much restraint when it came to that department. Believe me, it's gotten me into trouble on more than one occasion. It had been getting better up until that day, but the cumulative effect of too much driving and too little sleep had done a number on the part of my brain which controlled my acting skills. I couldn't fake it any more. I was feeling restless and there would be no getting around it.

I was more concerned about the effect it was having on her than it was having on me. I knew it would pass, but I didn't think she ever had to deal with somebody in person who has been in a funk where she was powerless to stop it. She's always been the type to get some sort of results. The only problem was I wasn't her usual madcap kind of friend, dealing with some mundane problem she could jerryrig a solution in a jiffy. There was nothing concrete for her to put her considerable emotional muscles into. My problems were and always have been ghosts. They've always been little wisps than actual monsters. Whenever somebody else has tried to fight them back, they've always failed. You can't fight a ghost, after all. You can only wait for them to leave of their own accord.

If you've ever had a best friend you'll understand what I was feeling. I wanted her to help me. I wanted her to get me feeling right again so I didn't ruin the remainder of the trip. I wanted her to be the one person who could break through whatever psychological barrier I had erected that was preventing me from enjoying myself, but I knew she would never be able to. That's what was distressing me most of all, that she wanted to help and I wasn't capable of letting her. It's like the salmon fish sandwiches. She thought those would be a good first stone to lay on the road to enjoying each other's company like we had been at the beginning of the trip. She couldn't see that what was happening wasn't something you couldn't patch with sandwiches and sweet tea. There was a hole in me--a small hole, to be sure--but it was getting wider and deeper every minute we spent together. And I was feeling like it would be too deep for us to recover from by the end of the week. She wanted to help, but all she was doing was allowing us to sink even further even faster.

I walked back to our stuff and sat down.

I watched her swim for awhile. Thirty minutes soon turned into closer to forty-five. She was upset too. That's what those extra fifteen minutes were all about. She was trying to decipher through what she should say or do next, try to figure out where it was we would go from here.

All I could think of was what it would be like if she started drowning out there. At that point in time, I actually wondered what I would do. Would I rush in to rescue her? Or would I watch from shore as she drowned? I imagined through that possibility. Doing nothing, feeling nothing, and letting her go. It would mean not having to get back in that water. It would also mean not having to muddle through the rest of the trip with her. All this without having to go through with the mess of trying to explain myself to her. The amount of talking around my issues was the burden. I was fine explaining how I felt to her; it was the subsequent attempts on her part to fuse everything back together that was the difficulty. It was hard telling her I wasn't feeling any different two days in a row. It would be easier to let her drown and be done with it.

It would be easier to let the problem slip beneath the blue and white waves rather than keep it afloat. She was the problem, her and her need to fix everything right away. If she could just let it be, everything would correct itself. But she was like a shark in the water, smelling blood and not able to let anything go, including me until she had devoured everything in sight. I wanted her to know how I felt, not have her fix me.

She could drown.

She could die.

I could let her.

And I could live again.

That's what I do, I take a good thing and I drown it until it is no more. What we'd had in those first couple of days was good. It was great, in fact. It went way better than I could have ever thought. But the more time passed, the more I realized that such an achievement was going to take all my effort to keep up, to keep up with her. It was exhausting to be so considerate and upbeat all the time. It was exhausting to be so on-the-ball and on-the-spot with everything we did all the time. It was exhausting being in love with her. Because once you started down that path, you could never stop. You always had to keep it up because you didn't want to disappoint her. You didn't want her to say, "What happened? Why aren't you acting the same way you did the other night?" You didn't want her to leave you behind.

You had to keep swimming to keep pace with her. You couldn't stop. You couldn't stop or you'd drown. Worse yet, you saw she would leave you. That would be worse than death.

I wanted to see her dead. I wanted her to die. It would be so easy that way. I wouldn't have to say anything. I wouldn't have to lift a finger. I wouldn't have to kill her. I could just let it happen and say it was an accident.

And it would all be over.

I took those first couple of days, how great they felt, and I twisted it into a reality where she was trying to show me up. I did what I always do, I made something that made me happy and I convinced myself it was going to make me feel awful in the end. Not only that, but I convinced myself that such an arrangement was intentional on her part. She was making me feel this way on purpose because she knew I was no good. She knew I could never keep up with her, someone who could make her happy. She was making me too altogether tired to want to bother with her.

She was taking something that was for once good in my life and she was killing it, smothering it to pieces, holding it underneath the waves until it couldn't breathe any more.

I could let her drown and I could be done with it all.

But then I watched her some more.

I noticed she still had that goofy, but endearing smile on her face even though she was out there by herself. I knew she was going through the same problems I was. She had told me as much herself. Yet she wasn't the one sitting on the sand contemplating how best to get rid of me. In fact, she was doing her darndest to fix things. And there I was, hating her for the effort. I was despising her because she couldn't leave me in my misery. Where was the logic in that? So what if she couldn't actually help me through the process? She was trying. She was doing something positive in the only way she knew how. That isn't the handcraft of someone out to get me. That isn't even close to that. That's the handcraft of somebody who cared about me enough not to see me wallow. That's the handcraft of someone who was happy to be with me even when I wasn't. That was someone who genuinely could be happy enough for the both of us.

That wasn't somebody you allowed to drown. That was somebody you should save no matter how cold the water got or how tired you were or even how many more days you still go. That was somebody worth saving.

She started to paddle back to me after awhile. She was going to meet me up where I was sitting I guessed to settle things.

Instead, I calmly walked out into the dimly crashing waves and I met up with her halfway. I stopped in front of her and gave her a short kiss.

"Not that I mind, but what was that for, sugar?"

"For being you, for continuing to swim even after I'd stopped."

"Really? That's all?"

"Really. That's all. I guess I'm glad you didn't drown or nothing."

She looked confused at that last sentiment.

"My pleasure?"

It's always been easy to dislike her. She's vain, stubborn, and more than a little reckless for her own good. She can be wicked and cruel, and sometimes downright vindictive. It's always been easy to see the moss beneath the stone. Yet there's always been something that's kept me coming back. There's always been enough there for me to want to hold onto. Maybe it's the fact she's never given up on me or us, even though I've tried walking away more than a few times. And maybe it's the fact she makes it impossible to stay mad at her because her heart's never entirely in the wrong place for long. Yes, I've wanted to strangle her more than once. Yes, she's not perfect and, yes, she is the worst woman I've ever known.

But she's also the best thing that's ever happened to me and the last person I would ever want dead.

(She can also make a mean salmon fish sandwich....)

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers