When I was very young—young enough that this story comes to me second-hand, and not from my memory—I apparently decided that I could swim and jumped into the deep end of a communal pool. I sank. I was saved. It kind of feels like a template, sometimes. Sitting in front of an untold story, convinced I’m the right one to tell it, ready to sink, ready to be caught halfway down and borne back up into the light.

The account I’m about to share isn’t mine, but it seems like the day for telling second-hand tales. In an odd narrative twist, it’s also a story about jumping in. As told to me, in first-person, by a third-party, it goes like this…

We were having a party

Once upon a time, people used to gather in great groups to spend time together. It was some time ago. Now, they congregate in tiny pre-vetted bubbles, masks hanging off earlobes, pocket-size hand sanitizer tucked into fists, ready to squirt at the least provocation, like gunslingers of yore.

So the party that was supposed to happen wasn’t really a party. It was more of a carefully curated get-together of just six people. (And see? I’m already taking creative liberties. Somebody throw me a life jacket!)

At this restrained reception, this diligent “do”, this bounded bash, six dear friends planned to spend the weekend together. But their real daring is that they were flocking together from different cities, breaking the sanctity of their bubbles.

I joke but, sadly, it’s no joking matter. Unlike some of my cooped up friends scratching frantically at the bars of their cages, striding fearlessly through half-empty malls in search of new air to breathe, I find myself all-but-willingly imprisoned by my own inertia, tucked into a fictional fetal position, dragged by main force by my infinitely patient husband to take a simple walk around the block. But I digress…

Six friends were planning to hang out. But one of them balked.

Sleep deprived and sapient

One woman—the one who first shared this story with me, although it ultimately came to me twice—committed, charged, keen to converge, found herself, alas, with cold feet. After a sleepless night worried about letting her cronies down, she awoke, the day before this fateful get-together, having changed her mind.

Because she knew, with the knowledge of intuition, that she should stay home.

So she called Sue, the venerable hostess of this conclave, to break her news. Sue, the sagacious Sue, who has walked through the pages of this blog in the past, and who I don’t speak to nearly enough (hi Sue!), listened raptly, nodded remotely, and then came back with this zinger: “Is it your intuition talking? Or your anxiety?”

Zap, the saber of perceptiveness cuts through our flimsy pretexts! Whoosh, it flies through the air, flinging droplets of insight! Because, tell me true, how many times have you righteously rebuffed opportunity, convinced of the rectitude of your gut’s claims, when in fact you were simply paralyzed by your own unconscious apprehension?

Stripped of fiction

The six friends got together. They had a wonderful time. It was weeks and weeks ago, so I can affirm with certainty that no one got sick. Nothing bad happened. All is well.

Better than well, really, because we get the benefit of the legacy. The sword of self-perception, turned inwards. The one that empowers us to dig deeper into our psyches to ferret out the hidden truths, the ones beneath the surface, and to fearlessly excise the fictions that we tell ourselves, until we willingly stand face-to-face with the things that scare us most, only to discover that—in most cases—we created them in the first place.

Am I sinking now? Or have I been saved?