in the swim (2)

So I have been doing the swimming for the best part of a month and need to decide whether to sign on the dotted line and become a Member of the exclusive little place. The swimming, while I'm actually doing it, is bliss and I am getting better at it, stronger, feel as though I am flying, in slow motion, bird on the wing of blue water. Chlorinated blue water, but still, it is the element and I am in it.

M.E. god is displeased. I hear him rumble and growl, a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, like Grendel and his mother both, howling for blood. That word again. But it is as though something is moving in the blood and a battle is being played out, David and Goliath, Daniel and the Lion. David and Daniel had the Lord on their side and won. The question is, will the Lord be on my side in the Battle of the Swimming Pool or will I be left gasping and bed-ridden with everything worse and the blinds all pointing south. Bravery in the face of M.E. god is never rewarded, we all know everything there is to know about this.

But the inner prompting is firm and insistent and says, do this; or, as my old grandma used to say: "Be heppy! Things can only get vorse!" Meaning that whatever you do things are going to go pear-shaped, so do the thing (that makes you happy) anyway. Well, she didn't mean exactly that, she meant shut up and be grateful for small mercies, especially the bean and potato soup I just made. But a little poetic license is appropriate, I feel, in the translation.

The thing is, I feel ill, my muscles flare and hurt, and some days I think oh gawd (sorry Lord), this is the beginning of something dreadful, back to how it was at the beginning. But muscle pain and feeling ill, c'est normale, and a couple of days and a few drugs later inner prompting says, get out and do it again while the coast is clear, be quick about it, make yourself stronger while no-one's looking. So I do. And it is all I can do. The writing is fast and furious, squeezed into tiny pockets. And inner prompting says, sometimes there is a door, and sometimes you can choose to go through it. Do not be afraid.
Why not? I ask.
Because fear is the devil.
Will I survive?
I don't know.
Why now?
Because now.