the deep end of the swimming pool

When I was little, my mom took me and my sister to swimming classes at the Y. I always felt apprehension, as we sat on the deck by the deep end. There was a feeling of chlorinated unease, of churning, rippling infinity as I looked down into the water. I recognized this as fear. One day, as all of us little dolphins-in-training were practicing our splashing and paddling, our teacher took away the security of the bouyant flutter boards we'd been using, the natural progression in learning how to swim. When it was my turn to venture into the unknown, I panicked. I began to sink. Water got up my nose. I coughed. And choked. And wept. My teacher was unmoved by my fear, and after several long minutes of my suffering, my mother stormed onto the deck from the upstairs gallery where she was watching, tongue-lashed the instructor, and took me home. My fear of deep water remains where I left it that day, complete with irrational fantasies of sharks and evil water urchins waiting to pull me under and hold me down.

Fear of the unknown depths has followed me into my personal life as well. I am not alone in this, although the universality of my fear does little to dilute its potency. Having been shy most of my so-far days, I've been scared of the possibility of being misjudged, misread, mistreated. People have been my deep water. Like most of us, I've avoided risk-taking, especially when it comes to like, lust and love. I've always opted for the surest thing. To me, nothing ventured was nothing lost.

But lately, something's been happening. I don't know what, exactly, whether it's maturity, the lunar cycle, or just being tired of treating fear with more reverence than life, but lately, I am becoming braver. We're supposed to get braver in adulthood, aren't we? But instead, we develop more layers of self-preservation. As children, we are encouraged and more willing to express emotion in as simple and pure terms as possible. As adults, we hide behind protective behaviour, because the idea is that as we age, we are supposed to need the emotional flutter boards less and less. How unfair and untrue this is! We should become more adept at self-expression, not more skilled at deflecting insecurities or hiding them behind nuanced subtext.

The other day, I took my sagely sister's advice, and decided to ask the man of my daydreams(and a former blog posting) to have a beer with me. And he took me up on it. There I was. Sitting on the couch with the man I'd built up an idea, an image, a persona of over the course of two years. Conversation rose and fell like gentle waves. He said sweet things about me, I responded in kind. It was all going so well. Then he told me he thought a girl had tried to ask him out over e.mail. I thought he was talking about me, but he wasn't. He said how he wasn't interested in her, that he didn't know if he was interested in dating at all. At that moment, I knew I had to tell him how I felt. Because while I knew the likely outcome, I didn't care. I still had that last bleary, beery mirage of hope. He looked over at me and asked me what I was thinking. So I said it, as plain as toast;

"I've liked you for almost two years."

It's not that I didn't think about being rejected. I did, a fair bit. But for once, not being open and honest was a bigger atomic mushroom cloud than dashed hope. I just couldn't diffuse the words or the cataclysmic importance of going after what I wanted. He was flabbergasted. He didn't know what to do or say. He'd had no idea.(I thought I was so obvious!) He told me he didn't feel the same way.

And it didn't kill me.

It didn' t sting, eviscerate, implode or drown me. I was caught up in the adrenalin of my boldness. He asked if he could hug me, and I said sure, and as he did, my back cracked,(yes!awesome!) and we both giggled and made jokes. This was what was on the other side of rejection, if you were really fortunate. Not the starchiness or strangeness of bared wounds, only one more barrier of the unknown broken down, and vulnerability met with graciousness and a bit of humour. Towards the end of the night and my glass of beer, I watched his mouth move as he talked, and I knew with near certainty that my kisses would never meet his. I also knew he wasn't who I dreamed he was. Gone was the perfection of courtly admiration, which lacks the burps and farts of realism that humanize love. In its place was a man confused by life and purpose and all the same dragons of existence we all do battle with.

I don't know where we'll go from here. Maybe we'll become fast friends. Or maybe we'll slowly fade from each other's lives. Time will tell, I suppose.

And in the meantime, I'm learning to tread water.