Sinking Ship

There are seasons of life when you become very good at keeping a sinking ship afloat.

You learn where the leaks are. You learn how much duct tape you need and exactly where to put it. You learn how to bail water out with one hand while patching a hole with the other.

Look at you. Still floating.

Still going to work. Still answering texts. Still making plans. Still showing up. Still smiling.

What they don't see is that you are exhausted from running around the ship trying to keep it from going under.

For a long time, I thought that was what life was.

Not necessarily happy. Not necessarily peaceful. But functional.

I had become incredibly skilled at making things work.

If something scared me, I figured out how to avoid it.

If something overwhelmed me, I figured out how to control it.

If something wasn't working, I adapted.

If I was exhausted, I pushed through.

If a part of my life hurt, I found a way to work around it.

Sometimes the duct tape works for a while. That is what makes it so dangerous.

A relationship can be falling apart, but you can become incredibly good at managing the bad days.

A job can be slowly draining the life out of you, but you can become incredibly good at telling yourself that it is temporary.

A friendship can become one-sided, but you can keep making excuses for why the other person is just busy.

You can be living in a body and a mind that are screaming for change, and still become so accustomed to the noise that you forget what quiet feels like.

We are remarkably adaptable creatures. Sometimes that is what saves us. Sometimes it is what keeps us somewhere we were never meant to stay.

My life was being held together by duct tape when cancer came along.

Cancer didn't create every hole in my boat.

Some of them had been there for a long time. Some of them were things I had learned to live with. Some were fears I had learned to organize my life around. Some were identities I had outgrown but was still carrying. Some were patterns that had become so familiar I mistook them for personality.

But cancer changed everything.

Suddenly, I couldn't even walk let alone keep running around the ship.

I couldn't keep patching.

I couldn't keep pretending that if I just worked a little harder, controlled a little more, worried a little less, or became a little better at coping, everything would eventually feel okay.

This was the storm that finally made the ship sink.

What I didn't understand yet was that I had lost the life I had been exhausting myself trying to keep afloat.

There is a strange kind of freedom that comes when the thing you have spent years desperately trying to prevent finally happens.

The ship goes down.

And suddenly, you stop trying to save it.

You stop carrying buckets.

You stop searching for another piece of tape.

You stop convincing yourself that one more repair will make everything okay.

You get out.

You float.

And floating on your own is sometimes easier than spending your entire life trying to keep a sinking ship afloat.

That realization changed the way I looked at my life.

Because I started wondering how many people are doing exactly what I had been doing.

How many people are spending their lives repairing something that is fundamentally broken?

How many people are calling it commitment when it is actually fear?

How many people are calling it stability when it is actually familiarity?

How many people are calling it patience when they are really just afraid of what happens if they leave?

How many people are so proud of themselves for keeping everything together that they haven't stopped to ask whether the thing they are holding together is actually something they still want?

Maybe your sinking ship is a relationship.

Maybe it is a career.

Maybe it is a friendship.

Maybe it is an identity you built when you were younger and have been trying to inhabit ever since.

Maybe it is a version of yourself that everyone around you recognizes, even though you barely recognize her anymore.

And maybe, like me, you have become very, very good at duct tape.

Sinking is terrifying.

Leaving can be terrifying.

Starting over can be terrifying.

There are very real consequences to walking away from things. There are bills and children and careers and families and histories and promises and people you love. There are circumstances where you cannot simply jump overboard and swim toward a new life.

But I do think there is something worth asking:

Am I trying to save this because it is worth saving, or because I am afraid of what happens when I stop?

Because those are not the same thing.

For years, I thought resilience meant being able to keep going no matter what.

Now I think resilience can also mean knowing when to stop repairing.

Knowing when the lesson isn't how to survive another storm.

Knowing when you need to leave the boat.

I didn't need to become better at staying afloat. I needed to learn that I was allowed to abandon the ship.

And once I did, I discovered something I never expected.

The water wasn't the end.

It was the beginning.

Because once you are no longer fighting to save the old life, you have energy to imagine a new one.

You can swim somewhere.

You can find land.

You can build another boat.

And maybe the next one won't need duct tape.

Maybe it will be built differently from the beginning.

Stronger.

More honest.

More intentional.

More you.

I didn't understand that sometimes the thing that sinks you is the thing that finally gets you out.

One is a tragedy. The other is a rescue.