There's a feeling that a wave has broken over me.
You may know the feeling. It's the height of summer, and your skin is clammy and hot and wet with salty sweat. The air you breathe is warm.
And then you dive into the bottom of a wave, and it cracks over the crown of your head, so cold it hurts. It's a whole body immersion in ice, cold but welcome as it changes the core temperature of your body, washes the heat from your eyes.
And when you emerge... the beach, it's the same. But the whole world looks different.
***
A change in perspective.
I'm not sure exactly when it happened- it's been growing, I think, for a while now. Maybe it was a weekend away with one of my best mates, showing me the essence of myself again.
Maybe it's the change in weather.
Maybe it's the knowledge that I made decision to be strong. Lonely, but strong, and true to myself.
Maybe it's because I've realised the truth in a saying of my nan's- "You need people, love, people don't need you."
Maybe it's just time passing.
But a funny thing has happened.
The shock of Tony hanging (and I can write that word without the creeps) has worn off. It's as if the shock of suicide has worn off, and it's as if he through no fault of his own.
I'm not angry at him anymore.
And I can feel him around.
Maybe he's not angry at me anymore either. Maybe he's at peace. It feels like he is.
The loneliness that I've craved the last few months, the solitude of Paradise... it's starting to feel sad and stifling.
There are big decisions to be made, and something tells me I will have little trouble making them, that things will fall into place just fine.
It feels scary, having to move on again. But I know it's the right direction to move.
It's terrifying, having to pack again, confront memories that have been packed away for six months now.
But it all has to be done.
In the doco The Business of Being Born, there is a midwife who says something akin to...
"Every woman who has a natural childbirth reaches the point where they are scared. The know they have to keep pushing to get this over with, but pushing hurts too much."
I've said all along, this feels like extended childbirth, riding the waves of pain, holding out for the next one. And right now, it feels like that, too.
I know I have to push through this last bit of pain, to find some relief.
But pushing hurts so much, it would be easier just to stop, and wallow in the agony.
You can't wallow forever. Eventually, you have to face that crowning pain and get it over with.