Looking up from underneath

About “What happened”.

When I first learned to scuba dive, I went to the Red Sea to do it.

I had never had a pool session to verify that I actually liked having my head underwater for extended periods of time; I had never had a “discovery” experience in the open water in the hands of a trustworthy guide. I had never snorkeled, had never even put fins on my feet.

I went because I had always wanted to try scuba diving. I’d been told I would love it. I went because I wanted to do something “different” – none of my friends were scuba divers, and I thought the idea was cool. But mostly I went because my friend Jane was going to learn, and because if Jane was doing it, then I was doing it.

Our first sessions in Hurghada were actually in the hotel pool, but at the end of the first day, when asked how we felt, we voted unanimously to continue in a shallow, sandy area in the sea. We hadn’t come all that way to hang out in the chlorine, after all!

So on day two I found myself unceremoniously (I felt at the time) dumped into the Red Sea, paddling across to join the others and trying to figure out exactly what the feet were supposed to be doing to help. When I say paddling, I mean that I was doggie paddling, in full scuba gear.

With the help of our instructors we eventually found ourselves several meters underwater, on our knees. I was obese at the time, and the 30 kilos of weights on my weight belt were not enough to keep a beginning (and very worried) scuba diver down. So I spent much of that first lesson with an instructor’s finned foot on my shoulder. He’d already given me the extra weights he’d brought along, just in case. They weren’t enough.

It was near the beginning of this first “real” underwater experience that I looked up. I was curious to know what the sea looked like from underneath.

I will never, ever forget that moment. The Red Sea is actually very, very blue, and what I saw that day was simply… the beautiful Red Sea with the sun shining on it. Exactly as if I were seeing it from the top. The sunlight danced in the wavelets, and I could almost have felt a breeze, except that…

My brain froze… I was underwater. What I had almost taken to be the surface of the water was actually the bottom of the surface of the water, the inner face of the garment’s lining, the part we’re not supposed to see, at least not for extended periods of time.

It was much too surrealistic for me to just take in stride. It was then that I had that moment of truth that many first-time scuba divers have: either I panic now and get myself out of this, or I accept the fact that I’m actually breathing underwater and see if I like it.

Because I WAS breathing. That’s what’s important to remember here: I WAS breathing.

I was breathing.

A smile filled my body and I looked back down at the group surrounding me. I understood that each of us, in his or her own way, was going through or had recently gone through a similar decision-making process. We were all there, in a bizarre new place for a human being to be, and if we were there together it was because we had all decided that the adventure was going to be a lot of fun.

—–

When people tell me – in person, by email or in comments on this blog – that I’m brave or courageous, or use even nicer adjectives that I don’t feel I deserve, I think about that moment in the Red Sea.

I was in a serious road accident; my body will never be the same. In the hours immediately following the accident I saw my existence from a place I’d never been before: a dark half-world where I wasn’t sure whether my companion was alive or dead, where I wasn’t sure whether I myself hadn’t been pulled under, never to resurface.

The accident happened before noon. Our odyssey from the accident site to where we finally found the care we needed in Vietnam lasted 48 hours. Many of those hours were, naturally, daylight hours. In the strange images my mind has retained of that period, it is always night.

But at some point I must have looked up and realized “I’m breathing,” because at no moment did I give in to fear or despair. I can’t take any credit for that, it just happened. It’s just the way it was.

When I wake up in the morning, my whole body – even the bits that aren’t broken – is stiff and sore. I understand that I will probably always have to deal with the after-effects of this trauma on my not-so-young joints.

My skin will never be the same. After losing over a hundred pounds to try to discover the “real” me that had languished under all that fat, I felt strangely unattractive because I was different. But my skin was nicer (if looser), and I was quite pleased about that. Because of this accident, however, I shall have scars in many, many places, most of them parts of my body that are quite visible.

I still have months – perhaps more – of pain ahead of me, through physical therapy and from more possible surgery to remove the metal that is currently holding three of my four cardinal points together.

I”ve lost a full third of my precious sabbatical “year”, lost the opportunity to do many of the things I’d been saving for my last months in Cambodia, with the kids.

I have many reasons to feel sad, depressed, annoyed, fearful, discouraged. From time to time I give in to a little self-pity, have a good cry, but while it relieves a temporary need to purge myself of some negative energy, it doesn’t leave me feeling that I need to do it more often.

Because I know, I remember without even needing to remind myself, that I am still breathing.

I am still breathing.

It’s a miracle, a gift. It’s a new start. A chance – an excuse – to change the things I don’t like about the way I was living my life. To get rid of some fluff, to let in some things I might have been afraid of. To remake myself entirely, if that’s what I want to do.

So why panic? The adventure has just begun. That’s not brave, that’s just really, really looking forward to having some fun!<