I Went to the Water

In September, I went to the water willingly but with secret hesitation. I went to have photos taken for this website, an offering called ‘Emergence’ where one visits the lake at sunrise. When the opportunity was presented then given as a surprise birthday gift, all the things that kept me from water had to be swallowed.

Born on the prairies in a place divided by a wide and powerful river, I learned that water was something rare and dangerous. Rare, because it rains so infrequently, and dangerous because the riverbanks were slick and the current strong enough to sweep one off their feet to a watery end. I never went to the water other than crossing over it on man-made structures with concrete promises to protect my passage. Crossing bridges became so commonplace that I rarely noticed the river or thought of its watery depths.

I had been in the ocean on vacation in my twenties but hated it – the sand moving underfoot created an instability that was too unnerving to bear. Watching my partner from the shore as he dove under rolling waves – stories of shark attacks and strong undertow drownings – fueled my fear to new levels. Then, in my thirties, I became unsettled in a whole new way when, at sea level, I was riddled with dizziness due to inner ear damage. I couldn’t even enjoy drinking water because, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, I suffered from dampness and found drinking water often made me feel lethargic and waterlogged.

For years, I dreamt of water; mostly of bridges that had crumbled into the river at home and left me struggling to cross. For years, I wondered what these dreams meant. Eventually, I determined that I had to improve my relationship with water, to learn about its properties and find ways to embrace them. Freedom can be found in its flow and formlessness and, though I wanted that, I was still afraid. Little by little, I worked at it and in time, found my way to the lake at sunrise. All the fears that had kept me on shore in the past were still there but no longer would they stop me. I stepped in – one foot in front of the other – and the sand moved under me, the ebb and flow caused me to sway, but I kept going. And as the sun found its way up into the sky, I emerged anew, like being baptized into a new way of being, or rather flowing, with water.