A Start To A Beginning

When I was 16, I almost drowned.

I remember the way the water grew heavy around my tired body, as if suddenly it was of one mind, congealing around me, holding fast as it drew me to its core.

I don’t recall much after that, only the burning of my lungs as my brother beat upon my chest, angrily calling me back to this life. I spit up the sea along with the death that threatened to sink me to the silt bottom.

This was the solitary thought that rattled through my brain on graduation day. I stood upon the precipice of my future and it was as if the sea had again swallowed me whole, stuffing my mouth and lungs full of cotton fire.

After graduation I would summer in Europe and in the fall I would attend Swarthmore as a public policy and women’s studies dual major. It was so tidy, neatly packaged, that I felt as if I had already lived it and merely forgotten. I wore my future as Atlas had carried the world; heavily upon my shoulders.

In the seated masses my family excitedly fanned the flames of their mutual pride, disturbing the quiet solemnity of the event, blinding me with a barrage of flashpoints from digital cameras.

Months later, in a small apartment in the 6ème arrondissement of Paris, I would scan through the old photographs, conjuring up the detritus of memories from a seemingly distant past life, trying to reconcile who I once was with my current incarnation; haunted by the forks in the road, convinced I had chosen the wrong direction.

But I get ahead of myself.

In truth, during much of the summer I had steeled myself to face the inevitability of my own future, giving myself quiet pep talks as my parents entertained foreign dignitaries and their wives on the Dubrovnik Riviera in Croatia.

I would be the obedient daughter, the grateful child. I would step in line with the expectations and let go of childish conceit. That summer, my life became punctuated with the consequence of would.