Rescue Diver

When I was going for my advanced diving certificate, one of the classes covered rescue diving. We were supposed to swim up to the victim, and say, “my name is so-and-so. I am medically trained and am here to help you.”

There were those of us in the class who changed that to, “I am mentally deranged, and am here to help you finish drowning.

I wonder if that has anything to do with why I never finished the course?

More likely, it’s the fact that while I was training to become a dive master, so I could work in partnership with my fiancé the scuba instructor, he got married. Talk about impatience; he married a woman who was already a dive master, and who spoke no English. I suppose that worked well, since he spoke no Japanese. After that, my days were filled with plotting ways to do him a serious injury, steal his boat so I could carry on sailing instead of being left on the dock, and mass quantities of margaritas.

In the end, when I tapered off the margaritas, I came to the conclusion that there would be no advantage to risking life in prison by getting his boat a la ‘And the Sea Will Tell,’ method. I simply went away and got my own damn boat.

Still, after all these years, I haven’t learned. That boat I owned came and went, and once again I tried sailing with someone. Then I went and got another damn boat, which I also enjoyed immensely, until salt water once again corroded that switch in my brain, so that I short circuited and sold that boat too. Then came the serial sailing, where I tried sailing with two different someones, one right after the other. The first broke my heart; I never meant to lose him in the fog. The second refused to reef so that I could keep my balance, causing me to breathe a sigh of relief when he finally let go the sheets and sailed over the dark horizon.

Now that I’m left boatless again, with nothing but mass quantities of guilt, and not even any margaritas, I think of all the unintentionally injured parties involved, including myself. I can’t help but wonder, it couldn't be as simple as a serious case of sunstroke, could it? I thought I was a together, stable person, able to accomplish whatever I set my mind to. I got this idea about myself mainly because all my wonderful family and friends tell me that this is what I am.

I do know that I am a heard headed fool who still believes in love with that one special person, despite some pretty impressive sinkings from making the same navigational errors over and over. But at the moment, there’s nothing to do but GET MY OWN DAMN BOAT AND GO SAILING.

Consider it done.