I'll be on the water
About two years ago, I ended up on the shore of Lake Michigan on a Sunday night, surrounded by a bunch of people. Until that moment, I had always been underwhelmed by the lake, but there was something about the water that night, something about how high it was, how black and deep and long the lake looked, something about the sky, which was also black — I felt like I could scream myself straight into the water and it would swallow me and that would feel good. I would feel whole and ended and finite and eternal. I ran in as far as I could, hiking my shorts up so I could go in even farther.
I stood looking out across the lake, seeing nothing, feeling the water lick its way up my thighs, the wind around my head. My friend E walked up next to me; we stood there in the water for a while; I don’t know what we said, or if we said anything, but suddenly I wanted to really dive in.
I ran back out of the water and started to take my clothes off, but a couple of people walked up to me and told me to stop, that there was a cop nearby, that I would get us all in trouble. I insisted as the moment threatened to evaporate. Over the shoulder of one of the people who’d asked me to stop, I watched my friend M, who had taken his shorts and t-shirt off and swum right in, run out of the water. I knew the moment had passed. I zipped up my shorts and relented.
Not diving into the lake that night remains one of the biggest regrets not only of my time in Chicago, but of my life.
Why didn’t I just dive in?
I’ve asked myself that question a lot in the years since it happened, but the answer doesn’t matter as much as the fact of it: I just didn’t. I didn’t swim into the lake, and I regret it.
I was talking with a friend yesterday about how every day I am truly ecstatic to think that I get the rest of my life to get better at all the things I do. I get the rest of my life, no matter how long or short that might be, to get better at writing, at being a friend to my friends, at being a daughter to my parents, a sibling to my siblings. I get the rest of my life to get better at playing guitar and writing and baking bread and listening to people and noticing things and thinking for myself. I get the rest of my life to put into practice the lesson I’ve learned, having swum in Lake Michigan many times since that night: that it’s not always or even often that the lake presents itself in such a huge and perfect way. That in fact, the lake is fickle. Sometimes too cold, or too choppy, or too calm, the air around it too bumpy. That when the right conditions for swimming present themselves the only choice for the living is to seize them.
I get the rest of my life to never again give myself a reason to ask why didn’t I just dive in?