companions
Last September, I went to see a psychic. Or, well, I Zoomed with a psychic, technically, sitting at my desk in my house, but you know what I mean. She pulled my tarot cards, among them Strength, which, in case you haven't seen it, looks like this: 
There are a lot of ways to interpret every tarot card, which is one of the reasons I like the format: it's a reading exercise, a palimpsest that reveals different shades of itself depending on the person, on the situation, on the season. But in this instance, we talked about fear.
My relationship to fear changed during the summer I had panic attacks all the time. I had always been afraid of losing control over my body, but that had mostly manifested as fear of invasion: pathogens, etc. Now I knew that the worst sickness grew up from inside me, and it wasn't something I could ever expect to excise. Accepting my diagnosis-- anxiety disorder, panic disorder-- meant accepting that I would always be at risk of feeling that way again. (Of course, not accepting it meant continuing to live with that risk and failing to manage it appropriately, so it was kind of a no-brainer in the end.)
Anyway, the psychic-- Amanda Yates Garcia, the Oracle of Los Angeles, if you want a reading of your own-- talked about the strength card as a way of looking at fear, and how we live with it. "Lions are dangerous," she said. "They just are. They're wild." In the version of the card above, the woman looks like maybe she's taming the lion, putting her hand in its sharp-toothed mouth, but in the version we were looking at, they were just walking together. "That's the real witch stuff," she said, her gaze steady, even through the screen. "Not trying to outrun what you're afraid of, and not trying to make it kneel to you, either. Just walking next to it. Just being like, yeah, okay, here we are."
I'm not afraid the way I used to be-- prayers up to Lexapro, my best friend of six years now-- but, you know, it comes and it goes. It comes down hard during record-setting heat waves, during the onset of fire season, towards the end of a year where I got a job and lost it, where I kept seeing stability and then seeing it float away from me. I'll be thirty-six in January, which means the next milestone is 40, and rootlessness sound different there than it does here. (Maybe I'll change my mind by then! Who knows! But I'd like to have more options on the table!)
Anyway. I've spent the last three days at a friend's beach house in Newport, an hour and change south of LA. (You do not have to tell me how lucky I am.) The shore is a two-block walk; the water is warm, for the Pacific, and surprisingly clear.
I swim in the ocean every Friday during the summers, and have for the same six year span as I've been on the Lexapro. I've learned a good amount during that time, especially since I go with a friend who grew up junior lifeguarding (hi, T) but the ocean still scares the shit out of me. In part, that's just rational. It can fucking kill you. It really can, and it will, without a second thought.
But I also love ocean swimming, maybe more than any other kind. The rhythm of it; the wash of the waves; what it feels like to hurl yourself into an oncoming wall of water and let it rush over you, cool and smooth. The waves get big here, much bigger than the 2 and 3 footers at our regular beach. They rise up fast and curl into a barrel, good for surfing, but scary when it's just you, five feet four of person under a five foot tall wall of water.
The first two days, G was here with me, so we swam together, keeping an eye on one another in the water and from shore. Yesterday she had left, so I went in by myself. I was careful, of course: stayed in sight of the lifeguard tower and other swimmers, didn't go out very far. I was scared and I was so happy, to be in that water. I ducked under wave after wave after wave. When I was tired, I got out and lay on the warm sand. I'm going to be afraid every day of my stupid life. I just am! I hate it!! And I'm trying really hard to let it come with me wherever it wants, to make a place for it at the table. It lives with me. There's absolutely fucking nothing I can do about it but say, okay, well then, here we are.
To be clear, many days I'm failing. I don't know that I'm ever truly succeeding. But I am trying. I keep walking. I think that's really all I can do.
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In completely unrelated news, I wrote about fighting on reality TV and what's shocking-- and what's real-- for BuzzFeed.
Also, we're doing HEA WTF, our online romcom boot camp again! I teach two sessions-- one on writing sexual tension, and one on writing the actual sex part. Also keep your eyes peeled for WTF 103: A Non-Romance Writing Class announcement coming soon...