There is an art to getting in over your head.

A science too, I guess, except it really isn’t either. Most of the time, we do not arrive there through one spectacularly terrible decision. A series of decisions, and indecisions, carries us to the point where we are barely treading water. We feel it rising little by little until it reaches our noses, and only then do we stop and wonder, How the hell did we get here?

Someone who has spent years ignoring her feelings (cough, cough, Diarra) might genuinely ask herself, How did all of this happen?

Well, let’s untangle it.

It happens when we marry someone we don’t really love because we haven’t learned to love ourselves, and instead of figuring out who we are, we choose a life that mirrors the person beside us because if we look inward, we might uncover memories we do not want to confront, and confronting one memory might bring up another, followed by another.

You see how that snowball would start rolling, or if we maintain the water metaphor, how the water would rise without us noticing?

But let’s follow that thread. We jump into a new relationship before closing the door on the previous one, never pausing long enough to learn anything about ourselves from either.

Folks, the water is now at our necks!

Then we prioritize a super-cool Scooby-Doo heist over confronting any of those feelings. Then we reach back toward our super-hot ex with the super-hot arms and convince ourselves that having a baby with him will not get messy because we sort of do not like him.

Oh yeah. We are way in over our heads now.

And as Episode Six untangles Diarra’s decisions and emotional cover-ups, it reveals that everyone around her is caught in a web created by their own choices, shame, and avoidance. Diarra may be at the center, but she is not the only person trying to build a future without first confronting the past.

Danger is a fucking conundrum

Please refer to my character analysis because that man is complex. He is trying not to become the person he used to be, yet he is relying on the skills he learned in that former life to regain his footing and become the man he wants to be.

Do you see the problem?

Danger is using his past to step into his future without understanding, or perhaps without wanting to admit, that those methods will taint the future he is trying to create. He wants the skills without the consequences, the survival instincts without the life that demanded them.

But can he separate the two?

Can he use who he was to become someone new without allowing that former self to take control again?

Oooofff. I am breathless just writing that.

And then there are the bundles.

Who the fuck stole them?

Aja, Another Avoidance Queen

For a hot minute, I thought it was the guy Aja was crushing on before her self-imposed responsibilities became a bucket of crushed ice poured over her head. But regardless of who took them, Aja is also in over her head.

She thinks religion and business will save her from the parts of herself she does not want to confront. Meanwhile, she is basically spilling over with lust, and treating that desire as something shameful.

Rather than allowing herself to have a healthy relationship with sex and desire, she punishes herself. She believes denying herself pleasure will somehow make her worthy of all the good things God and life might have waiting for her.

Oh, yeah. I know about Catholic guilt, and I know Aja is not Catholic, but it sure as hell smells like it. Maybe this guilt is part of all religions. You know, a way to keep us in line. I mean, what better way than with guilt?

But talking about guilt and self-flagellation brings us right back to Diarra.

Diarra, the Eye of the Chaotic Storm

Deep inside, Diarra also believes she is unworthy of the good things life has to offer. That is why she remains in a constant state of suspension. She gets close to happiness, sometimes close enough to touch it, and then pulls herself back by creating another obstacle, complication, or rule.

Oh, yeah. I know about that too.

That is what connects Diarra, Danger, and Aja in this episode. Each of them wants something: love, reinvention, pleasure, stability, a future. But none of them believes they can simply reach for it. They complicate it, deny it, or attempt to earn it through suffering.

Then, when the consequences begin closing in, they act surprised as if the water got that high just then, when it’s been trickling all along.

That is the real art of getting in over your head. You avoid one difficult truth, then make a decision designed to protect that avoidance. When that decision creates a new problem, you make another. Eventually, you are no longer dealing with the original feeling. You are drowning beneath all the choices you made so you wouldn’t have to face it.

And that is where Diarra finds herself in Episode Six: married to a man she never truly loved, emotionally tangled with the man she supposedly does not want, planning a baby as if feelings will politely stay outside the arrangement, and running headfirst into a dangerous mystery because solving someone else’s life is way easier than examining her own.

Duh!

This character is literally pouring her own water over her own head, and it makes for some great comedy.

Conclusion

So yes, Diarra is way in over her head.

Or at least, she thinks she is.

Because sometimes, when we are panicking and flailing, convinced that the water is about to swallow us, the only thing left to do is stop fighting long enough to extend our feet.

That is when Diarra might realize the water was never as deep as she imagined.

The truth beneath her is solid. It may be uncomfortable. It may force her to confront the marriage, the rebound, the baby plan, her feelings for Danger, and every memory she buried along the way. But it is there.

Diarra does not need another distraction, rule, or elaborate scheme to save herself. She needs to stop running from what she feels, put her feet down, and finally stand in it. But would she do it?