Gentle

I once was in Hawaii and saw a couple preparing to go deep sea diving. They had weights; they did stretches and breathing exercises beforehand. They were prepared, they knew what to do, they had practiced and practiced and walked away safely. I was entranced in part because, on this particular day, I was scared to even snorkel, much less dive deep, deep down without a connection to the air, without a connection to the surface, and with so much pressure.

I was reminded of this as I considered my emotional being and means of relating to people. I like to deep dive into the emotional world. I can go deep and explore and sometimes bring up or point out something interesting. But I am not always prepared, or gentle with myself or other people. The deep sea divers did not notice me watching and drag me with them. And they prepared themselves as well.

Over the course of my life, many people have said to me, "You're too intense; you want too much; this is too much for me; you're too sensitive." I've become used to it. It doesn't feel good, but it just pops up from time to time, this reaction from other people. And they don't always mean it in the same way; it wasn't always my deep diving that provoked this -- sometimes it was more splashing around or something. But the most recent time I heard it, I heard, "You are taking me deeper than I am prepared for; I am scared to be away from the sunlight and the air; there is so much pressure down here," and this from a person who shares my proclivity.

It leaves me hurt and sad to hear it. I want to be more gentle, but sometimes, often, I don't even realize that I've pulled someone with me, especially when they were so willing to come part way.

My partner, I think, has developed a method of dealing with this, one that I think is most kind, although I do sometimes get frustrated with it because sometimes I think he is more capable of deep diving than he trusts in himself. He will notice when it's getting deeper than he can or wants to go, and tells me so. But then he doesn't leave. He stays at the surface, or whatever level he can manage. And there he waits for me, to bring him the things I find at the bottom.

But often, people can't do that for me. Often, they have to swim away for awhile to get back on land, and often, once they get there, I imagine, the sun feels nice, the land feels safe, and I'm too busy down in the depths to notice until they've walked away. They remember that it was scary to go deep, and I remember the feeling of them leaving. I want them to come back but I don't know how to ask; maybe I don't know how to hang out on land for long enough. I want to show them the things I find in the water. I want them to explore with me. 

It is also exhausting for me to do all this diving, and at the same time it feels essential, in the sense that I don't know how to otherwise be and relate, especially to myself. I have this great skill, these wonderful, beautiful tools, this ability and strength and I don't know how to control it always, and it can become dangerous, unsafe. It can hurt the people I most want to share it with. My method so far has been to get more stuck in it, I suppose, and even in writing this, I notice a judgment, about how people just want to make things easy for themselves and stay at the surface and I'm here doing all this real, honest work.

But it's lonely down here, and the sunshine is so warm.