This is an article I wrote when I first got to Mexico, and I was acclimating myself to ocean swimming and doing stress exposure therapy to conquer my fear of deep water. It’s one of my favourite short stories I’ve written.
~
April, 2021
I have an obscene fear of deep water.
Perhaps I’m a puppet of the popular culture impact of Jaws. When i get in the water my whole lower body (presumably the first to be gobbled) becomes anxious and tingly, as if i can’t pull my legs in close enough to my torso. I find myself wishing my limbs would retract like accordions into my body until I feel safe enough to let them out. It’s like i can’t make myself small enough. The feeling that I’m going to either explode or implode occupies my brain. As soon as my toes can’t touch sand, it’s as if something is going to come up out of the deep and swallow my entire lower body, leaving nothing of me but a stump as my petrified face sinks into the depths.
Where does it come from? I haven’t always had this fear. One time when i was a kid, my ass got stuck in the centre of an inner-tube, and i got flipped over. My mom was watching me and she ran to the water and turned me rightside-up, and even though i was choking and spitting out the lake from my belly i was fine. I think I remember it. Sometimes I’m not sure if i remember the images that i created in my mind when my mom told me the story of what happened, or if i actually have a memory imprint of the incident. Either way, when i arrived in Cabo three weeks ago, I knew i needed to go into the ocean, but i could only go so far.
As my skin has started to improve, and my real face and body started to emerge from the depths of nearly five years of wretched illness, I’ve started to feel a strong sense of how i want to live my life. I mean, I’ve always had a sense of how i want to live my life — i think that’s part of what’s been so frustrating for me throughout the years — but this time, i had this sense of how valuable every single day is, and how passionately I felt the deep desire to live my life without fear. I don’t know that I’ve had that specific sense before… and although I’ve despised the experience of the past five years i have to say that I’m grateful for this result.
It’s like i never knew the experience of dreading a day until i was so sick, and then i spent nearly five years dreading waking up in the morning because it meant that i had to be awake until I went to bed that night. Now that I’m feeling so much better, i want to squeeze each day for all it’s worth — no wasted moments, no trivialities. I’ve always been intense, but this sudden healing has torn the blinders of illness from my eyes and has taken my intensity to a whole new level.
Yesterday i went in the water in a different way.
I had the sense that if a monster came up out of the deep and chewed my legs from my body, i would die a bloody stump… but i would also know that I didn’t let this fear fuck with me anymore.
I started in nice and slow. There were three young Mexican boys splashing and playing along the buoys that separated the resort swimming area from the public area. I enjoyed that they were using the separating ropes as something to climb on and have fun with, as if they were unknowingly taunting the boundaries between their beach and the area roped off for clients of the resort. I smiled at them, and the tallest of them smiled back at me, said something to his friends, and they all laughed and looked at me. Oh well.
I waded in to my stomach, and peed while making sure it looked like i wasn’t peeing. We all do it, don’t worry. The warmth of the shallow water started to turn cold as the turquoise waves lapped up to my chest, soaking my unnecessarily padded swimsuit top. Not unnecessarily padded because my breasts are already large (they’re not), but unnecessary because i don’t care to give off the impression that they are. Stupid pads absorb all the water and make it take hours for my swimsuit to dry.
As i tiptoed the blessed ocean floor, I felt the first wave of anxiety come up through my feet, snaking its way up my ankles through my thighs and into my belly. For me, the tingles start at the bottom of my body with water, rather than the top like they do when i look over the balcony of a really high building — the fear of great heights washes opposite from my head to my feet.
I breathed into the sensations, and invited them in. You’re welcome here. There’s nothing to be afraid of… except everything.
But what about the monsters? I thought, challenging my own attempt at confidence.
What about the sharks and the deep unknown that exists in the estimated 95% of the ocean that remains unexplored by humans — this space that I’m knowingly wading into? These are the statistics running through my head as my toes all of a sudden lose contact with the sand and a wave of nausea passes through my gut. Cold flickers and snake shivers run up my legs — my nervous system communicating to me based on previous knowledge. Get out! I have the frantic urge to scramble back to the sand, or to pull my legs up close to my chest and cry for someone to come and save me.
Captain Fantastic rung through my head: There’s no cavalry. No one will magically appear and save you in the end.
The boys were far in the distance, or maybe not that far but they were not paying attention to me and were busy laughing at the ropes. I dog-paddled and fought with the thoughts and the compulsions to become as small as possible, until I realized that i know how to swim. Lessons with my mom and her five children at the public pool when I was a kid give me the boost I needed. Take that, nervous system.
I looked out to the far-away buoys separating the ocean into two parts: boats and no boats. The ropes delineated a rectangle all around me meant to provide a sense of safety and protection. I did not feel safe — I was unsafe but determined. The ropes, after all, only sat on the top of the water. They did not provide any protection from the monsters of the deep.
I thought of my condo neighbour who’d told me the day before that he’d swam all along the buoys (on the boat side) the entire length of Medano Beach. He was still alive — still had his legs too. No issues with monsters at all, he’d said.
The sand was far-far-farther from my kicking feet, and i started to settle into the groove of a casual sidestroke as the water got colder all around me. The fear was there as always, but I reminded myself: I am ready to die before I will live afraid. I have not come this far to only come this far.
My stroke picked up and my heart was pounding. I was approaching the buoys, and could see them now, covered in barnacles and green slime, yellow styrofoam bobbles eroded by years of exposure to the ocean and sun.
The urge to curl up in a ball was like a constant song on repeat in the background of my mind. There was no stopping now. The young boys were specs on a blue background, and the lifeguard and beach staff were going about their jobs with no awareness of me. I was alone, and my soft, permeable flesh was in deeper water than I’d been in in decades… the whole scary world lurking large-scale underneath and all around me.
I could see the seaweed hanging from the ropes and disappear into the depths. The water had gone from turquoise to deep navy blue; the warmth was long gone and replaced by the vast chilly unknown. My body was strong, my stroke was even, and as I approached the buoy of my attention, I was fascinated by its inanimate nature. Not sure why but I thought that these markers must have some lively element to them. With such an important job, such a brave sentinel existence, how is it they were just getting old, worn, and forgotten with the rest of us?
I touched one of them and clasped the rope for a moment feeling its rough slippery sinews bristle in my waterlogged palm. The buoy itself was slimy and coated, equidistant from its brothers spanning the miles of water in which i found myself small and centred. I became aware that from above, a plane or a bird would have observed me as a tiny and insignificant speck. Perhaps invisible and not observed at all. Inconsequential for sure. That’s part of what i love about the ocean; it makes me feel inconsequential, and sometimes that kind of humility is exactly what i need. Unlike my stoic yellow friends, i had no role here. No job whatsoever other than to keep my legs intact, and make it out alive.
I left my hand on the rope for a couple moments longer than felt comfortable, and with an intentionally open heart greeted the snakes of anxiety radiating up my legs from the dark shadowy expanse below. For a brief moment, they threatened to pull me under, until I remembered that just as I’d created them, I also had the power to remind them that they don’t exist.
If greeting you is necessary for me to confront my fears, then welcome, friends. I will make peace with you in order to live this life the way I want.
Having a visceral sense of the world of depth behind me, clenching my internal lady-muscles as if that would somehow protect me, i swam for the shore. My spine lurched for a moment and it felt briefly like I had just barely escaped the grasping claws of monsters as they reached for me from underneath.
Quick and efficient, in a straight line, I’d done what I’d come to do, and now I had to make it back to live my life with my newfound sense of place. I kicked my still-there legs, and reached my arms long and strong, grateful for the swimming lessons even though I remembered hating them as a kid. The buoys fell far behind me, bobbing up and down to the ongoing rhythm of the waves, and the cold turned to warm again… the navy to the pleasing turquoise that I’d sought refuge in for so long.
The sense of relief that passed over me when my toes touched sand was not as strong as I’d imagined it would be. I felt more mature and grounded than when i started. I passed my young comrades and they all watched me — from the boys to the buoys. I imagined that they were in awe of my death-defying feat, silently paying homage to my adventure. Really, they were probably just wondering why i kept looking at them.
I came out of the water channeling Halle Berry from Die Another Day. No one was looking anyway, but I like to think i had more stride than before. A slight edge to me: I am no longer afraid.
Everyone else was going about their business. No one — not even my friends who helped me with my beach chairs and my towels — had any idea of the personal magnitude of the moment, or of what it meant to me.
I suppose that’s how it goes.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.