Last night I swam in my underwear.

 

Probably many people have done this in their lifetime, but I have not done this before.

I wanted to swim, it was a beautiful night, and my bathing suit was upstairs and I was downstairs, so I convinced myself that my camisole looked like a bathing suit. One thing that didn’t occur to me is that no one can see me inside my pool. Yes, I do have neighbors, but their windows are all blocked by foliage and bad lines of site… maybe good!

My pool is private, and actually even in the daytime no one could see me if I wore nothing. It’s so ingrained in me that I have to wear a swimsuit. I can’t imagine skinny-dipping in my own pool!

 Heres what I think… “ maybe I will have a heart attack and if I am naked, the EMT guys will  be so embarrassed.”

I think there’s something wrong with this kind of thinking. The body is a body. If I were to have a heart attack in my pool and die, the only thing I would worry about is who would tell my dog. I love my dog very much and she faithfully watches me swim from behind the door because she does not like being outside while I am swimming in the pool. I think it’s very tender of her. She can’t stand the thought that she can’t reach me. She only weighs 16 1/2 pounds that she’s the most loyal person I’ve ever known..

 

I’ve been thinking  a lot about why I worry so much about doing the right thing. It started when I was a little kid. One of my friends wanted me to steal a piece of candy in the five and dime because she was doing it and she thought I should do it too. I had such an anxiety attack at the age of seven. I touched the candy for one minute and it was burning hot to my fingers, so I immediately threw it back in its place. My friend, Betsy, was with me, and said I could never be a member of her club. Her club didn’t seem like a good place to be a member up in the first place.

 

Now anybody can steal from anyone…. I see it all  the time. The people with power steal from people with no power. Most of the people with power are  the people with money. The people with no money think the  people with money must be blissfully happy. People with lots of money try not to think about the people that have no money. In fact, most people try not to think about other people.

 

So this selfish behavior is apparently rampant in our society, because next-door reports it every day. There are constant descriptions of other peoples bad behavior, which are followed by critical comments and nasty comments and sometimes humorous comments  which are the ones I like.

 

Instead of staying in their own lane, people seem to be constantly on the lookout for people that are doing something wrong in their eyes. This is a bad plan. I finally recognize how bad this is at my ripe old age. I have spent a lot of time watching other people, and criticizing them in my head or worse, out loud. After you do something like this, you feel bad inside as if you’ve eaten something that’s rotten. Gossiping about other people doesn’t bring you  more power, it  brings you more pain.

 

I remember once years ago when a woman was creating false rumors about me, only to bring herself more power in our social group. She spread rumors that people actually believed. People that had been friends of mine for 20 years. As she was a new member of the group, she was trying very hard to gain status. It was easy for her to gain status by making up stories that weren’t true. I tried so hard to defend myself. I spoke with all the people that I had supposedly slandered. It was so shocking to me that all my years of friendship and loyalty were discarded in favor of believing this woman’s slander. There have been so many books written about situations  like this. I have probably read most of them. In an instant, all the years I had spent supporting and loving my friends, and being loyal to them, were cast out by this one person.

 

Years later she actually came and apologized to me for doing what she did. I started sobbing. In that moment all the pain returned. I felt like I had no protection against meanness, and I still don’t. I will never trust this person again. I guess what was the most disappointing to me was the fact that another human being could hurt me so much. I wasn’t really tough enough to not let what happened bother me.

 

All I can think of in the world today is that we are all so fragile. Everyone is afraid to admit that they’ve done something wrong even if it’s a minor thing. Apologies don’t happen in relationships or business yet apologizing under any circumstances can make a big difference.

 

I found that I couldn’t forgive this woman because her apology contained no shred of understanding of the pain she had caused me. She didn’t know the meaning of remorse.

 

So back to last night… I found after the first few moments in my pool I forgot the fact that I was swimming in my underwear and noticed the sliver of moon in the dark sky seemed to be winking at me.