Writing

WATER

Written for the Moth

 

A lot of people wonder why they’re afraid of water. But wouldn’t it be kind of stupid not to be? Sharks, crocodiles, moray eels - even the thought of a big fish with teeth is enough to make me clench. Thousands of years of evolution has made us forget our home in the sea and look fearfully at the depths.

 

Personally, I don’t like water that much. I hate having my hair wet. It’s a fight to get me into a pool or even a deep bathtub. Sometimes, I wonder, if I hate water… but I am water… what does that say about me? When I reject drinking the glass of water, and opt for the oak milk, what am am I telling myself? How often when I bemoan the soggy feet, the rain the air, the puddles that lap at the hems of my jeans, how often am I telling myself I loathe the very substance that is me.

 

My mom was an avid rafter, and she used to raft the Rogue when she was my age with a group of firemen. It was all fun and games until one of those same firemen got called into to fish a body out from the under the same rapid he launched over, beer in hand, year after year. 

 

She said he was never the same, but neither was she. 

 

We would raft on that same river year after year when I was a child, and anytime that rapid came up, I could feel the fear build in her, like she has been there herself, pulling the white corpse onto the shore, lifejacket still intact, ripped from the sticks that held him in the undertow for days.

 

I've always been a panicky person. My moods are like ocean waves sucking me under. Half of the time I have been alive I have felt like I couldn’t breathe. So, sports that require me to hold my breathe weren’t my thing, but I wanted to change. I wanted to grab my fears by the horns. So, I took a kayaking class. 

 

A few weeks in, we headed out to the same river that I had rafted as a kid, the same one my mother had flown down over and over in her thirties, but this time I was legit. I had a swim skirt on, those outfits that secure to the boat with neoprene. I had my lifejacket tight around my small body. I was ready, finally, to face this fear.

 

We were doing a drill. One partner, me, would flip over, nose plug firmly in place, mouthguard poking out like you’re playing chubby bunny. You’d flip over and then your partner would catch up to you, gently ram your boat, and you’d grasp on, flipping yourself over. This was the class right before learning how to use an oar to flip yourself over yourself. In retrospect, I wondered about the order of these lessons.

 

I flipped over. My boat and myself, we were so light. My kayak was like a leaf on the water. I open my eyes underwater and search for the red bottom of my partner's boat. I don't see it. I feverishly looked for my rescuer as I felt my lungs get tight. My body flooded with familiar adrenaline from years of panic attacks. 

 

I started to struggle with the boat, thrashing my feet, but the wetsuit was glueing my legs to the interior of the kayak. I pulled as hard as I could at the tab of the swim skirt, but I couldn't break its seal. I crane my neck toward to water's surface. It's so close, just a few inches. 

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And I think about what's going to happen to my mom, when my body gets pulled out of the water in that same river, just up from that same old rapid. I had to make my peace. I thought "if we are going out, are we going out thrashing, or peaceful?" I wanted her to serenity only face when she identified my body. 

 

I let my body go limp. I relaxed my limbs inward. I accepted the futileness of my survival, and then I thought about the direction of the tab of the skirt., the stretch of the fabric, the way the water rushed over it. I gently pulled the tab one more time and the skirt slips off. I drift to the surface. The taste of the air was Delicious.

 

Although sometimes I am still moody. I still cry at the drop of a hat, and tears of joy well in my eyes walking down the street. In my mind, the waves are high, and they always will be, but finally, instead of waiting for myself to change, to be calm water, I ride the waves.

 

I finally learned to Kayak.