Funny how I declared one song by this artist to be my theme for 2009, only to choose another as the song that describes and defines my life in this last year.

It’s been a brutal year, and really, I shouldn’t have been surprised.  My life’s never been a cakewalk by anyone’s standards.  But this year was one of emotional devastation on a very different, outward-centred level.  Instead of personal disappointments and losses, actual people moved out of my life, leaving cavernous holes in my heart in the wake.

Through it all, the key thing I had to learn to do was to hold my head above the raging waters and swim for shore, even when my limbs simply felt too exhausted to try.  It seemed futile and pointless, and for a while, you could say I went into a dead float and decided to allow the tides to determine my fate.

Even then, I found myself nearing the shore.  More evidence that, “You’ve gotta swim, and swim when it hurts/The whole world is watching/You haven’t come this far to fall off the earth…”

Day Ninety-Four:  Swim – Jack’s Mannequin