I’m not sure if I know how to write anymore. Somewhere deep in my body is buried a trove of words that the past five months have rendered inexpressible. I’ve been in survival mode, and as I begin my re entry into the world of personal time and space, I find myself a shell shocked shell of the self confident self I left behind at the end of spring semester. I’m afraid to write honestly about what happened and I’m not sure I even know how to…or if I even want to. In fact, all I seem to want to do is to sit at the end of a long boardwalk, where it meets a set of steep stairs that lead down to cold water. Just set out like a lump and staring, maybe with a cup of coffee in hand, for however long it takes to reel in the magnitude of what has come and gone and how it’s left me changed.

Everything happens for a reason- I believe that, but I wonder if everything happens to make us better, wiser, stronger than we were before. My optimistic side says unequivocally yes but then why do I feel less peaceful than ever before. I feel disconnected from myself, like the stormy gray sea that my body is watching from the top of a boardwalk set staircase. And I’m frightened. Everything has gone so far the opposite from what I pictured. If I pictured it at all, which at this point, I cannot recall. How do I trust myself again. Forget about trusting other people, forget about men. But me, myself, how do I trust? How does one trust a stormy sea? The water is all around, encircling, embracing, holding. So who supports the water?
All around me encouraging eyes speak of how much I’ve learned, how well I have done.
And all I can think is how cold that steel gray water was, when I plunged on in.