Your grit is showing.
That shy fifteen-year-old girl you were who, seemingly out of nowhere, bellowed “NO!!!” at your friend in a sinking boat, once you saw the look of resignation in her eyes that told you she was about to let it tip over with both of you in it.
She looked so shocked that you FELT shocked by whatever had just come out of your mouth to make her look at you that way…
but it worked.
Instinctively, you both summoned the last dregs of the resolve you didn’t know you had, and in a split second, you’d balanced the boat. It overflowed, but it stayed afloat.
This was just gym class, so supposedly, the stakes were low. We were in a high school swimming pool, after all. Something within me I hadn’t even known I HAD, though, screamed, “THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
Twenty years later, my boat’s not afloat because the waters are calm; I’ve been rocking and bailing SINCE high school. The seas are stormy, my vessel is damaged, and that bellow in my belly has yet to let the waters take me.