cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Share your quitting journey

Breaking The Surface: Waiting To Inhale

Storm.3.1.14
Member
1 9 4
  
   
  Thinking back over my daredevil-ish youth, I can remember a handful of dreadful mishaps that I endured while in the water.  A couple of them happened in lakes and the ocean, but most occurred in swimming pools. One, in particular, inspired me to create this blog today. (See if you can relate…)
   
  As a kid, I frolicked in some pretty big swimming pools, and I even encountered one deep enough to accommodate competitive high diving. This pool had aluminum towers that stretched up to the rafters of the South Carolina State University athletic center, and they seemed as dizzingly high up as the deep end of the pool was plungingly low down.
   
  Anyway, being a thrill-seeking “water monkey”, I arched atop the surface of the water - a leaping dolphin! - and wriggled, headfirst, down and down and down through the sparkling water until…I touched the bottom! I even stretched out to press my back against the gritty concrete, testing how long I could stay there, gawking up at a “roof” of wavy water, 16 feet above me. (What a thrill!)
   
  And, then, it hit me: I had to go all the way back up and up and up to the surface. To get air. To breathe. To not drown!
   
  I pounded my feet against the concrete floor of the pool, to give myself a boost upward. I kicked and kicked, and I paddled and paddled, rising up and up…burning through my dwindling air supply.
   
  I got scared, and clumsily clawed and kicked at the water.
   
  Fright gave way to stark fear, and I flailed my arms and legs in a panic. My little heart was hammering against my ribs, the hot blood was swoosh-swooshing in my ears, my cramped lungs yearned for air, and my horrified brain was screaming, “BREATHE! NOW!”
   
  So, there I was, caught in that terrifying underwater zone: I could look up and see salvation was only 8 feet away, but I could also look down and see the grayness where the lifeguard was going to scoop up my drowned body. 
   
  The zone, and I had only 7 seconds. 
   
  I could give in to the panic. I could lose control. I could surrender to the screaming urge to open my mouth and inhale.
   
  Or, I could   kick just one more time. Twice more. Paddle   just a little harder. Hold my head upward to the surface…get it close-close-close enough to break through, face-first. I could   grab the lightning in my mind for one extra spark of energy that would get me through just 7 more seconds. I could   dig deep, kick, hold on, make it through…  and live!
   
  Well, I’m here to tell this story, so you know what happened.
   
  But, can you relate? Did you experience something like this, too, in your youth? Maybe you’ve already been in some situation where 7 seconds was all you had to fight for to make it through? If so, then   don’t you already know how to just…hold…on a little longer?
   
  During the sharpest “flashbacks” of my early quit (we‘ve all had them), I actually touched back to this one pool experience. Those sudden “blindsides” somewhat reminded me of being in that critical zone between “gotta keep going” and “gonna give up”. In those cravy moments, I remembered what it was like to   just keep focusing upward . To dig for that little extra energy, to kick just one more time, and   to want nothing more than the air on the other side. 
   
   To just hold on for 7 seconds more, and not open my mouth to inhale my ruin.
   
  See what I’m saying?
   
  You   gotta do this! So, kick! And, kick again!
   
  Break through, then breathe…
   
   
   STORM: 749
   
   
9 Comments