‘Stuff might come up’ she advised us with characteristic candour. I wondered fleetingly what could remain in me to rise to the surface; what coded secrets lay yet in the depths of my untapped unconscious. The thought checked me only momentarily… gave way to only momentary pause… before my burdened mind, struggling to keep pace with her insight-laden flow, broke free of that which it had snagged upon and resumed its headlong dash in pursuit of the underlying significance of her words, as they poured forth in ever-measured tone… fighting the previously-set limits of my comprehension in an attempt to process in real-time the complexity which she spoke… grasping at clues, implications and the edges of meaning that disappeared from the peripheral view of my consciousness… just as I thought I might catch hold… information overload.

I took her note of caution as a truth… curious only as to what it foretold… what I might stand to glean that hadn’t already been exposed, that might be unlocked and revealed to me, the magnitude of what it could potentially mean, to make the choice to lean, in, to the unknown, to the unforeseen… to inhale it and let it wash over me and go deeper than I’d ever previously been… anticipation and, somewhere lurking, anxiety… not unobserved by any means… tentatively ready, undeniably edgy, still somewhat on my guard… mentally preparing myself in that instant for the plunge… for going no-holds-barred… to go hard.

Not relishing the thoughts of the gruelling assault that in that fleeting moment my mind’s eye saw… the inevitable endless-seeming underwater tumult when the right way up becomes almost impossible to perceive… when heart pumps overtime, stomach churns and lungs burn… swept off your feet… cloudy water and agitated sand obscuring  your thoughts and view, distorting what you believed you knew… taking you to new levels of bodilessness, uncontrolled, helpless… at the mercy of the watery wall crashing down relentless, submerging all your senses.

Bracing for the hit, knowing it would rob me of my breath whilst I was under it… already tasting the brine in my throat, feeling the wind whip my face, hearing the roar in my ears… envisaging the grey-green white-topped cascade gathering height out of view… somehow still fancying my chances in the face of it, assured by experience and faith that I would fill my lungs once more when it abated… and  I resurfaced once again.

Stuff might come up… Subhan Allah…