87 feet under.

A few nights ago, after a three-mile run to wind down the day, I was trudging up the stairs, dragging my traffic-cone orange feet with every step (the color from my fluorescent shoes, not the natural hue of my skin), longing to stand under the hottest possible water in the nearest possible shower (two feet in front of me by this point) to ease my tired body and mind, to warm me after the unforgiving air on any December evening. 

Every winter, I struggle with the same dryness in my skin, a parched state that comes only because I can't follow the simple rule of shorter showers during the colder months. It dries you out, everyone knows and says, it's not good for you, keep the water lukewarm. Well, I say to myself, being submerged in near-boiling (okay okay, not quite) is just about the only time from November to February that I'm not freezing my ass off, aside from blasting the heat in my teeny-tiny car (which I'm told is also a no-no), coupled with just about the only time in my entire day that nobody is able to reach me, talk to me, or intrude. Well.

So then, what do you do when the water stops?


What happens in that very moment when you are head to toe in bubbly lather, soap upon soap to rinse away the day, the waning pressure easing up against my sore shoulders, my tired frame, and the water halts, a sudden cease, not even time to fade from a stream to a drip, just


stops?


Let me explain. While this is a true story and this did in fact happen a mere few days ago, there is more to it than the inconvenience at not being able to shower for a. warmth, and b. the general sweaty state involved after a workout of any kind. It's unfortunate, and it sucks, but. Things break, and time wears against at all physical things, possessions lose value, erosion hacks away the dollar signs of any profit, even hard-working tools of our lives can cease to function, heave a life-worn sigh, and rest. (We have a well that is as old as our home. The pump to said well, 80+ feet in the ground, pumped its very last, with what I have to believe was with all its rusty might.)


It seems unfair, usually, or unbelievable, because we have a very firm and skewed belief that our investments negate natural error. The higher the price, the greater the likelihood that our, well, stuff will last forever, that we will always be able to afford the best, that our brainpower for invention will win out. Think of it as an even-God-couldn't-sink-this-ship complex. If you've seen one Titanic, you've seen them all. 


It's probably what led me to balk in disbelief as I stood, covered in suds, shivering and twisting the shower knob frantically. It's probably what makes me wrinkle my nose when my car's engine light blinks rapidly and furiously. It's most likely what makes me scratch my head with one hand, hold my college degree in the other, and wonder where the time has gone. 


The thing about guarantees is that they are temporary, which often makes them maybes at best. It doesn't make us defeated before we've even tried, and it doesn't suddenly deem certain things useless or not worth aiming for. I'm not saying college was a mistake. Where I thought it would bring me, however, is somewhere very different from where I actually stand. The mistake might lie in that I expected a more irrefutable outcome, that things would fall into a particular line in a shorte, more manageable  time frame, that I wouldn't find myself constantly elbowing against the crowd around me, all fighting for the same thing: We all want a seat on the same tiny lifeboat, all in hopes that we can escape this goddamn sinking ship. 


So? There have to be alternatives, and realizing that sooner rather than later will save you a lot of personal grief and disappointment. So we shower at the gym (yuck), or at a friend's house, or we ... don't? So you use a bottle of convenience store water to rinse away what remains. Or, on the greater scale, so we learn to swim, so we get some killer quad muscles treading deep ocean waters, so we float on until someone comes to our rescue, so we fight to keep our heads from sinking. The dead ends are self-imposed, so what I suggest is that we free ourselves from believing we have run out of options, that when things fail we've failed, and start asserting that when life is not abiding by our plans or rules that there is something better to be discovered, something beyond what we ever could have imagined for ourselves.


Truly, it would be easier if there were a personalized raft to rescue us from our own particular problems in our own particular sea. But the water is stopping completely, or it's rising fast around us, and no one is going to wait around for you to break out the shovel or start building the sturdiest of dams. It's an opportunity to both roll on and fight back, change perspectives and repair. If it's not what you anticipated, you are surely not alone. But rather than focusing on your disbelief, on your quandary with life's sudden curves, give your attention to your next move up, the ways to push forward, the new attempts you will make. To the ocean, deep into the earth, go forth go forth and go forth.