Beyond.

It's a little overwhelming, these changes.

I literally feel like I'm drowning. When I first learned how to swim, I struggled the most with calming myself down and trusting the water. I realized that the only way for me to not drown is to "let" myself drown. It took a lot for me to push myself off the pool floor of the shallow end on to the several-feet deeper end, to let the water carry me.

Many, many times, I had to pause and breathe properly, and stop gasping for air. It was only the third day that I ventured away from the pool's edge, to not have it within arm's reach. The first few times I did this, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, and the mixture of fear, embarrassment, shame, cowardice, struggle, resistance and panic was heavy in my chest. I would trust the water a little bit, let go, but forget to breathe, and then feel myself slip into that muted world just below the surface.

Whenever this would happen, this almost-drowning, I hear myself saying over and over again, in my head:

"I'm going to die in a pool, I'm going to die in a pool."

I'd have to say, the saddest part is that it's always at that moment that I give up, and accept the fact that I was going to die in a pool after all, that's when I am suddenly pushed up by some force, and allowed to breathe in air again, "allowed to live".

Sometimes, the answer is to just give up.

***

I wonder how much or how often housewives and mothers shut up about their feelings, their needs, their wants, and if every woman is really just destined for that. I look at my mom and I wonder what she has had to give up, if anything, to move to a foreign country with my dad, a place where she had no support system whatsoever.