Mermaids

She is older than I was when the darkness dragged me down. She is so much wiser. Sweeter, more adventurous. Were those things stolen from me, too?

The questions I would ask are drowned in the twilight ringing with laughter from the pool. I feel it - 7 years old - and I act it, splashing, diving, doing headstands underwater. Showing Amy how to breaststroke and kick turn.

If you are one, like me, with the hyperactive thoughts, if your thoughts cascade over your head as full and powerful and rushing as a waterfall...drown them. Find something that shuts them out. Find something that makes you SO happy, you are literally soaking up every moment of it.

When you are sad, won't you remember that you were happy and you will be happy again? I dunk down until only my nose and eyes are above water. I look and I breathe and I save these images and the sensation of the water on my skin and the muffled sounds of tinny laughter. I save them for later. I save them for now.

The camaraderie of sisters. That's what I was promised that fateful year of seven. And still that wish hasn't come true. I hold my sisters-in-law as close as I can, trying to be a sister, feel like a sister.

The laughter winds down as the crickets drone louder and the frogs belch their love songs in a chirpy chorus from the wetland. The long grass is alive with the crickets hopping, the air filled with bats dipping and drifting, trolling for their mosquito meal. And we are midnight silhouettes against the pink of the sun's goodbye sky. A moment cherished and savored is a moment I couldn't feel pain or torment or torture.

When you can't stop thinking, what's your "hard stop"? Do you have an activity you can do to take a break from thinking?