The Scare

Well yesterday was a mixed day.  We had a cook out at the house with all of the fixings.  Yummy!  Then we went to the lake.  "Our Spot" is a little hole that is pretty secluded.  It's not one of the main stretches of the beach and there usually aren't many people if any there.  Even yesterday with everyone off for the 4th, there wasn't another sole out at our spot.  We took the kids and splashed in the water for an hour or so.

Then Mark decided he wanted to swim out a ways and swim back.  This is the first time we've been swimming this year.  He had a hard time making it back to shore.  It was a truly awful experience.  I barely doggy paddle.  I had the three kids close to the beach splashing around.  I took a look out and Mark is bobbing in the water.  I thought I heard him call and I froze.  It was probably one of the worst experiences I've ever been through.  I can swim enough to splash around, but how am I supposed to save a six foot two man from drowning in deep water when I can't really swim?  And if I went out after him would the kids follow and try to save us?  We could all end up drowning. There wasn't any one on the beach.  No one to call to for help.  Just us in the water.    I waited in the shallow water, praying that he would make it back to shore.  Holding my breath every time he bobbed down the breathing a little when he popped up a few feet closer.

It seemed to take forever, but he finally made it back to shallower water where he could stand up.  I grabbed a hold of him and asked if he was OK.  He didn't really talk, just nodded.  He was breathing hard and still making his way up to the beach.  I gathered the kids and we all headed to the truck.

Then I got pissed.  I wanted to cry and yell.  I almost watched my husband drown, I'm sure he felt miserable,  maybe embarrassed, he looked exhausted. And I found myself angry.  At HIM.  It felt irrational, but I couldn't stop being so incredibly angry.   Like he put me through a horrible ordeal to prove how macho he was by swimming way out further than he could handle.  I felt small and helpless.  And so incredibly selfish.  It made me question if I loved him enough to risk my own life to save his. What would I have done if we were there by ourselves, and I wasn't held back by the kids?  And then I was mad at him again that I had to choose between making sure our kids were safe and trying to save him.  If he couldn't have made it back, we would have all sat there in the water and watched him drown.   How could I have ever lived with myself if that had happened? What would that have done to the kids?  When you are in love aren't you supposed to put the other person's well being before your own?  And I didn't go after him.  I stayed in the shallow end, holding on to my kids.  It was horrible.  I never want to go through that again.  Right now I'm just stewing and trying to figure out how to come to grips with these feelings.  How I should feel about it.  What I should have done differently.