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big blue ocean

The Gulf of Mexico, yesterday a turquoise mirror, is feathered with whitecaps this morning. I’m shimmying ungracefully into a clammy, slightly smelly wetsuit. It’s too tall for me, giving me a neoprene spare tire. I tromp awkwardly down to the dock, where a motorboat bucks violently in the choppy water. I climb aboard and am forcibly seated as it speeds off. Apparently, we’re in a hurry because the wind’s picking up.

At an isolated buoy in the middle of watery nowhere, we do the falling backwards off the boat thing. It’s all very spy movie, but instead of combing the unstable horizon for bad-guy speedboats, I’m wondering: what the hell was I thinking?

On a lark, my friend Kris and I splurged on a package vacation to an all-inclusive resort near Cancun. A touristic paradise where the ocean is so smooth and blue that it looks fake, like the painted sea in an architectural model.

After one too many free margaritas, Kris convinced me to take the beginner’s SCUBA course offered by the resort. Certified years before, she’s a dive fanatic. “You’ll never forget it.” She promised as she sipped, raising her eyebrows meaningfully over the salty rim.

She’s right. I won’t forget it. Mostly because, as much as I adore the sea, I only trust it as far as I can touch. I am terrified of deep water. And yet, here I am, far from shore, breathing canned oxygen, struggling to get my mask on. When I get it on, the experience is even more disturbing. The water line sloshes up and down in front of my eyes, and yet I am breathing air. It just feels wrong. We are humans, not fish; we don’t belong here. 

big blue ocean

The big (deep) blue. Photo courtesy of KConnors

Scuba Doo School

At least I was trained—yesterday, for four entire hours. Now, as one of five heads bobbing in the big (deep) blue, I wish I had taken dive class more seriously. My classmate Joe and I were strangers on vacation, at school in a resort. After a couple of hours of lecture, we dressed up as divers and played in the pool. We made Darth Vader jokes, did the elbow shark fin thing. Ha ha.

We did learn some fun stuff, like regulating your vertical position with your breath: inhale, float up, exhale, sink. How to do the squid: let your flippers do all the work while your arms trail unnaturally beside you. And, of course, we learned the diving thumbs up.

Scuba diver doing thumbs up in the ocean

The scuba thumbs up. Photo courtesy of Star5112

Carlos, our handsome young dive instructor, spent an inordinate amount of time on the thumbs up. Over and over, we “practiced” this—the signature gesture of drunk frat boys and the Fonz. Repeatedly, Carlos interrupted our pool scuba play to ask the silent thumbs up question (Are you OK?), to which the silent answer was: thumbs up (Yes).

Of course, I’m OK, I thought. We’re in a pool and the water’s four feet deep. But Carlos doggedly insisted, earning increasingly goofy, exaggerated thumbs up.

Out here by the bobbing buoy, there’s Joe and me, Carlos, and two cocky, impatient guys—actual, certified divers—who came up from Cozumel, where diving was cancelled due to high winds. While Joe’s looking wan, the divers appear a bit too avid, as if they plan to rob us once we’re underwater.

Carlos checks our tubes, gives last minute advice. Again, with the thumbs up? I obediently lift my opposables out of the water. I’m OK, already! The diver guys are so supremely OK, they’re jumping out of their second skins.

But Joe, he doesn’t look so OK. He’s not upping his thumbs. The instructor shouts over the wind in broken English: “Make up jor mind, Yoe, or we’ll all get seasick bobbing around here.”

The power of suggestion.

As I watch Joe vomit, I think, absurdly, Oh, the current will carry it away. Then I’m treading water in a cloud of shredded chicken and cheese and tortilla bits. My next thought: He had the chilaquiles for breakfast. Carlos lets out a piercing whistle and the boat roars over to pick Joe up. Decision made.

Wow. I am literally swimming in vomit. But before the thought has time to turn my delicate stomach, I catch the pro divers’ faces. Grinning and leaning towards me, they’re just waiting for me to freak out. That does it. I tighten a mental belt I didn’t know I had and give them an aggressive thumbs up. They lean back. Carlos asks again. Six skyward thumbs.

We’re good to go.

Going Down?

Slowly, we begin to sink into the deeps, thanks to our weighted belts. After ten or so feet, my wetsuit gets way too tight. Something cold and slimy creeps into my stomach: fear. I try to deny it, as I’ve been taught by countless motivational posters and protein bar ads.

Fear is for cowards, not for me.

Back in scuba class, Carlos had said a random, weird thing: “You may feel like you want to take your mask off.” I had rolled my eyes. Now, as I glance at the quicksilver surface further and further above me, something in my head snaps. Ice water floods my chest, flattening my lungs. My heart swells until it’s about to explode. I can’t breathe!

Of course, I’ve felt fear before. Rattlesnake. Car crash. Burglar in my house. But all that, I realize, was nothin’! This is the biggest, most all-encompassing terror I’ve never imagined, coupled with a single, irresistible, implacable urge—an absolute imperative: to rip off my mask, in order to stay alive, twenty feet under the surface of the vast, inhospitable ocean.

It made perfect sense at the time.

We’ve stopped descending, and Carlos is doing underwater charades. He looks at me. Freezes. My eyes must be giant, fish-like, panicked orbs. In an instant, he’s beside me, staring into my mask, asking the thumb question: You OK?

Huh? I think. (I’m usually quite talktave. Only panic makes me monosyllabic.)

You OK? He wiggles his thumbs, like maybe I can’t see them.

I will be, just as soon as I get my mask off so I can breathe. Now, where are my arms?

Are you OK? His thumbs are now an inch from my mask.

Ok? Am I? That’s a good question. Let’s see…

Carlos’ eyebrows have popped over his mask. His thumbs are now yelling: ARE. YOU. OK?

Am I OK? I look at the divers as if they can answer the question for me. In tandem, they roll their eyes with a complete and utter lack of compassion. With that, a plug is pulled, the freezing liquid in my chest starts to drain, and the urge to unmask myself passes. Rationality bubbles in: Guess what! I’ve been breathing this whole time. Go figure. Next thought: Jerks!

Somehow, their mockery breaks my paranoid terror trance and some semblance of logic returns. (Well, as logical as one can feel, breathing underwater, several yards below the surface of the ocean.) I give Carlos a belated thumbs up.

His eyes scrunch in a smile, and we set off into a dream.

Breathing Underwater

scuba diver breathing underwater

breathing underwater (with the fishes)

Squidlike, we glide effortlessly in and out of undersea canyons, past graceful turtles and prehistoric-looking king crabs, through kaleidoscopic clouds of darting, shimmering fishes, flying through a forbidden fantasy universe of coral castles and technicolor sea creatures. For a little magical while, I am free as a fish. Free of gravity, buoyed simply by the air in my lungs, hovering in supreme, exquisite, silent beauty.

And, I get it.

I get now why the divers so resembled junkies looking for a fix. And why Kris talked me into doing this. (I even forgive her.)

Later, as we speed back to the resort, the big, strapping diver men are shivering like mad, but I’m not cold. Quite the opposite. I’m tingling all over—radiating heat, energy, and conquered fear.

Funny thing, fear: like vomiting, it’s not voluntary; like breathing underwater, it’s not always rational; and, like snarky diver dudes, it’s not always the enemy. Sometimes fear is there to keep us from harm. And sometimes it’s an invitation to truly live. As the boat races over the bumpy sea, I sit right up front on the bow, facing into the wind, grinning like a maniac.

I am so very, extremely OK.—Part of our Adventures series…enjoy!

Join in! What was your peak fear experience and how did you overcome it?