Coupeville Sports

And you thought I swam in Penn Cove cause I enjoyed the taste of the water…

I have depression.

Have had it, and have fought it, for awhile now.

Not clinical depression, perhaps, since I can’t afford someone with a lot of diplomas on their walls to officially certify my moods, but it’s not that hard to figure out.

It’s also not that hard to figure out where it started.

The deaths of my parents spiraled into a bad business deal where I crashed my physical health, compromised my ideals and threw away inheritance money on hundreds of DVD’s that now sit buried in a storage locker owned by someone else.

Since that time, it has gotten better, than consumed me again when I introduced alcohol to the mix, then ebbed again.

I have more good days than bad, but I know my silences trouble some.

It is nowhere near as bad as it once was, not that long ago.

I have made changes, I have made (and am making) amends, I have accepted (or am trying to) that some things will simply not work out the way I would like.

There is a photo that was posted recently, of a person who matters a lot to me, a person who has lost much and yet remains as upbeat and full of life as anyone I know.

It was a beautiful photo, one of the rare ones that capture love and hope in one truly transcendent image of a person and their dog, seen from behind as they stare out at the sun-caressed water.

I would like to see things always in the light that shines through that photo.

It may take me some time, but I will get there.

I know the depression is always there, lingering at the edges, waiting for a chance to get back in, but I fight it.

Some days better than others.

It is a big part of why I go into the less-than-warm waters of Penn Cove each day (207 and counting in 2013, and not a wet suit in sight, cause I’m not a tourist).

Yes, it is cold. Yes, it is salty. Yes, sometimes, it is stinky.

But I go, day in and day out, in sunshine and rain, and, sometimes, in howling wind that slaps the crap out of me with the swells it creates.

I go in, because, by doing so, I prove I’m stronger than this foe. That I can, by focusing with a laser-like intensity (well, at least until the first icicle shoots up my crotch each day…), win a small battle with myself.

The moment when I come out of the water and stand on the rocky, barnacle and mussel-encrusted hunk of beach, alone, having beaten the water for another day, is why I do it.

Because, if I can beat Penn Cove, I can beat the depression.

At least that’s the plan.