Just keep swimming...

I am sinking, drowning, struggling to keep my head up. I am withdrawing and feeling myself isolate and put up a hard little shell, inside of which I can curl up, break down, and dissolve into tears without anyone having to see or know.
Dramatic? Well, yes. But it’s honest. It’s honestly how I am feeling right now. (Well, maybe a little more how I was feeling earlier. I just finished painting my nails with that new-ish “crackle” polish and, for a home-done manicure, which I usually suck at, they look pretty good. So I am feeling a bit better, having had a distraction, and one that ended in such pretty shiny fingernails.)
ANYWAY – back to the drama.
Oh. Yes. Sinking. Drowning!! I do it to myself, sometimes, somewhat. This, this time, is not all self-inflicted, though, I know that. I really do have a lot on my plate. And I am not handling it well. And then I get down on myself for not handling it well. I start to feel guilty for things I shouldn’t feel guilty for. I get defensive about things I shouldn’t get defensive about. I worry about things I shouldn’t worry about. And I get incapacitated by the constant, incessant rumbling in my head of all of my “should”, all of my “to-do’s”, all of my “need-to’s”...it takes over and I feel paralyzed. Like this flood overwhelms me, I look up at these huge, tsunami-sized, destructive waves and I’ve forgotten how to swim. I’m just standing there, letting these cold, salty waves crash all around me, and I look at them in wonderment and think, “Yes, I ought to do something. I think I knew how to swim, sometime. Perhaps I should try it again. Hmmm.”
And then, apparently, I paint my fingernails and write pointless blogs instead of swimming.
But now, I’m diving in. The only way to the other side (the other side is: happiness, competence at my internship, completion of schoolwork and classes, being further along in the deployment, handling the deployment better, communicating with him better, worrying less about my mother again (I seem to have regressed), etc.) is through. I’ve always loved to swim, literally. Let’s hope it will cross over into the figurative!