Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming

Memories are funny things, you don’t know when they’re going to trigger – an old picture, a song, a scent, memories are funny things.

I love all Disney movies but Finding Nemo has a special place in my heart. I feel like it’s a journey where Marlin had to lose himself in order to find his son and Dory’s voice still rings into my ears – Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.

This picture was taken in San Sebastián and it’s one of my fondest memories because I was happy that day. After that trip I struggled a lot, mentally. The next two months were close to the most difficult two months of my life. I locked myself in the apartment, I’d cry all the time, I barely ate or did anything. I was withdrawn. I used to watch Finding Nemo all the time and Dory’s words kind of stuck to me – Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.

Something good happened, after a while after that dark phase things started to take shape. I was the happiest I had ever been in my life before COVID-19 wrecked us all. Not that it has made any dramatic changes in my life but it has slowed me down, my growth. Things were fast-paced before this and I think this lockdown has given me time to have a different perspective. I think about the San Sebastián day a lot. The day I was really happy.

“Do you miss him?” My therapist made a remark over our video therapy session.

I miss what he could be to me. I miss my dreams about us. I miss ‘me’, that innocence, that feeling of being safe.

“It’s okay to miss him, you loved him. Your feelings are valid. He hurt you, he hurt you a lot”

I can almost never not cry every time someone says that to me – he hurt you.

I replied sobbingly – You don’t understand, I can’t miss ‘him’ because that’s all of him, I just miss parts of him, not the whole ‘him’, you know, the parts which I’m not even sure if were real. … Hey, I was wondering do therapists need therapists too?

“Yes! Of course! We need someone to talk to, … too.”

You know it’s funny because you know everything about me but I don’t know anything about you. I can be your someone, you know…

[To be continued]