Peniel - Day 1...1:13pm

I’m sitting on the sandy bank of the same creek, but in a different spot. It’s cool, but not uncomfortably so. In fact, I’m glad that I am wearing a short-sleeved shirt. My burning Winston’s wispy smoke adds to the calming effect of the sunlight painting patterns with shadows through the trees and the leaves swirling gently and floating by in the slow, lazy current of the water.

I have no bobber to watch at the moment. My line is not in the water for now. I’ve seen one fish. It was about three inches long, maybe half an inch thick. At least I know there’s something alive in the brown water before me.

I abandoned the first hole. I got hung up on a submerged log and broke my line, losing my hook, weight and bobber. Undaunted, I rerigged my line and continued to fish, attempting to avoid the place I encountered problems. Before very long, I snagged what I suspect is the same submerged log in a different spot, about 10 feet further into the middle of the creek. This time I managed to save the bobber, but another hook and weight was lost. I rerigged my line yet again, but this time, I packed my gear. I would change locations. The fish weren’t biting there, and I kept losing to dangers I couldn’t see below the surface. Time to move on. Try something, some place, different.

It occurs to me though, that I am not despondent over this turn of events. I didn’t give up or shut myself down to the idea of fishing. I didn’t beat myself up or feel guilty for losing a bobber, two hooks, two weights and a couple of Catawba worms to the game. I didn’t fall into self-pity and wail about how I will never catch a fish because I’m not a good enough fisherman or that I’ll never be good enough to catch a fish because I keep getting hung up on logs (or worse, simply because I have gotten hung up in the past). No, I simply moved to a spot I felt I might have more luck.

I baited my hook and cast. Nothing. Time and time again. But I did see tiny. Then wham! A bite? Success? No. Another log in the middle of the creek. Snagged again.

As I did the last time, I managed to save the bobber. But the count of hooks, weights and worms lost climbed to three.

I decided to stop for now. Maybe think of a better place to try. A place with less trash under the surface. Even now, I don’t berate myself as a failure. I don’t throw my past experiences in my own face and declare I’ll never succeed because of them. I sit and enjoy the scene. I know I can try again, in a different body of water. I don’t get frustrated or afraid. I stop, relax. Enjoy the day a different way.

Relationships have been compared to fishing, hence the saying there are more fish in the sea when an opportunity is missed or a relationship is lost. So now I have to wonder, why can I react this way fishing, which is actually what my self-esteem, or lack of it, is greatly tied to from my youth, believe it or not, and not do this in the romantic waters?

I wanted to die as a child over lack of fishing skills and enjoyment. I prayed, crying in my pillow, over and over as a boy to be a better fisherman and hunter, and to actually figure out whatever was so fun about these activities in the first place. So, no, it’s not a matter of fishing being less important in the grand scheme of things than romance.

Somehow, I’ve changed. gained perspective, even a sense of it doesn’t matter if I am good at it or not if I have fun attitude toward fishing. I’ve grown up. But when it comes to relationships, I’m still that 13 year old boy who fell in love with a woman who nearly killed him and helped set him out on a very self-destructive path and yet still shudders at the thought of speaking ill of his first love. I need to figure out how to grow up here too. My self-esteem should no more be tied to romance than to fishing. Relationships, or lack of them, should no more define who I am than whether or not I catch a fish does. Something needs to change.