It occurred to me this morning that even when I may seem to have started to find myself…there are still other parts that I have misplaced.
When I was a child I was fascinated by the ocean. For a little girl, living in West Virginia, who had never even seen the ocean, this might seem odd. But it is true. My first “What do I want to be” was a marine biologist. Over the years I gave up on this for practical reasons.
I met my narc when I finally decided to learn to scuba dive after moving to Florida. I was 30 years old. I made that decision prior to meeting him.
What I now realize is that I have, in the years since, told myself and others that diving was HIS hobby. Something that I was brought into based on my relationship with him. That is untrue.
I was remembering something that happened to me once during a drift dive. On a drift dive, when you surface, you flag down the boat and they come to retrieve you once they spot you on the surface. I was accidentally separated from the group…and any good diver knows that it is inadvisable to dive alone, especially when you are a novice. I made the decision to continue anyway as I did not want to give up the dive to surface.
After being alone for about 15 minutes in about 70 feet of ocean, I noticed a large sea turtle swimming toward me at a fairly high rate of speed. They are not aggressive so I supposed that he would just pass me by headed somewhere else. He didn’t.
As he got nearer, he slowed down and got very close to my mask, looking at me very intently. This was a fully grown sea turtle that likely weighed well over 150 lbs. I still did not feel frightened but was curious as to what this creature wanted.
After looking at me for a few minutes, the turtle swam under me and began to push me toward the surface. I moved out of the way as I did not want to surface too quickly He just kept getting back under me and pushing upward. After a few minutes of “fighting” I decided to surface slowly, as I had been taught.
The turtle surfaced at the same rate, staying beside me the whole time.
Once I got to the surface, I expected the turtle to swim away, but he didn’t. He waited there with me for about 5 minutes as I flagged the boat. He stayed very near, practically in physical contact with me the whole time.
Once I saw that the boat had spotted me and was headed my direction…I turned back to the turtle and realized he was swimming away. By the time the boat arrived, he was gone.
This was something very special to me.
Something I had nearly forgotten about…
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