Tsunami.

I remember in the late 90's, my friend Mary and I went to a festival where a couple bands were playing in concert. One was a group called Splender, and they had a song with a lyric that I can't get out of my mind.

"There's a lot of things I understand, and there's a lot of things that I don't want to know."

I'm having trouble today.

It seems like the pain and hurt just engulf me and swallow me up, slowly and insidiously, until all of a sudden I'm lost in an ocean of feelings that are bigger than me.

One time I saw a video of a tsunami, not a big one, where the water just gradually came in, not like a wave - it just crept in and before you knew it the water was everywhere and little beach huts and seashell stands were just floating, and then snapping apart, and you didn't want to see but you couldn't pull your eyes away.

And then, the water slowly crept back out again, out to the open sea, leaving a beach full of crustaceans and fishes and broken pieces of buildings and kelp. Lots and lots of kelp.

Just as it came, so it went.

That's how I am. The hurt - my god, how it hurts - warmly, gently, almost kindly, washes over me, but it's so insidious that I can't tell I'm drowning until the very end.

Sometimes I have to tread water there, in the acrid pain-ocean. It's so big that I lose who I am and what I stand for. I don't know what to do. I lie there on the couch and I can't even cry, I just lie there with a big dry lump in my throat and think strange thoughts that have nothing to do with anything.

Sometimes it takes days and days before that tsunami waves pulls back out into the deep. Sometimes it's just a few hours or on really lucky days, a few minutes.

But when I'm engulfed, I just don't know what to do. I don't know how to go on, and I don't know how to just feel it and observe it and let it go.

There's a lot of things I understand, and there's a lot of things that I don't want to know.