What Are You Feeling Now?

Dahab, Egypt on the Sinai Peninsula was such an incredible place. Absolutely charged and vibrating with the energy of history, war, and a spirit of rebuilding and reclamation. I was fortunate enough to spend a week there in my early 20’s as a part of a backpacking trip I did throughout all of Egypt and the Sinai peninsula. I had heard from other travelers and read online that Dahab was home to some of the most unbelievable scuba diving in the world, in the Red Sea, and while I had never done it, and honestly didn’t particularly have any desire to, it was just one of those things you had to do in a place like this. I had booked tours out of Dahab to Petra in Jordan, Mt. Sinai, and snorkeling at the famous Blue Hole. It was the furthest away from home I had ever been and at many points during the trip due to proximity to cell phone towers, my phone would get SMS texts saying “Welcome to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” something I never thought in my life I would see. For me, this entire area of the world is enchanting. Of course there are intense political and humanitarian tensions and I recognize that my enchantment comes from a place of not having lived that first hand experience, but growing up a Baptist Christian, it was the setting for so much myth and religious folklore. I remember feeling breathless at the sight of the Red Sea for the first time, saying in my head, “This is the sea Moses parted!” I had left behind any religious attachment many years prior, but the storytelling and worldwide knowledge of this site charges it to magical levels. Nearing the end of my stay, the hostel I was staying at had a group of natives from Dahab that were very adamant that I scuba dive. I told them many times that I had never done it and that I was a bit anxious about it, but they assured me it would be fine. They were all certified professional divers and had created their own method of clipping novice scuba divers onto this metal arm mechanism in which a pro diver would guide the novices around, sort of like a manual theme park ride. They took me through a brief training, solely dedicated to the breathing aspect of the scuba mask, how to clear water from the goggles and how to speak to the instructor via hand signals. They didn’t bother with any details of how to ascend and descend because due to the metal arm mechanism, all movement would be controlled and facilitated by the pro diver. All I had to do was deep breathe and enjoy. The feeling of breathing through a scuba mask is intense. It’s incredibly labored and there is no possibility of taking quick anxious breaths or else you essentially lose the control of the flow of oxygen from the tank. I remember beginning to breathe underwater and my mind feeling very uneasy about it. That quickly faded once I got the breathing pattern and my body relaxed into the slow inhale……exhale……The instructor asked if I was ready and I signaled with a thumbs up and we began to descend. We eventually reached as deep as we were going, 30 feet underwater. I had never been underwater this deep. The pressure was very heavy, but as I looked around, my mind was absolutely blown. Electric colors coming from coral and fish, looking down into depths deeper than my eyes could see, and looking up to see the pin prick of light that was the sun. It was unbelievable, straight out of a nature documentary. The instructor was guiding me around and I was focused on keeping my breathing in check, but as we wrapped around the corner of this section of coral, I noticed a bit of water leaking into my mask. At first it was only a bit, but I figured we’d be down here for some time longer and it would probably be in my best interest to clear my mask of water. I signaled to the instructor that I wanted to stop for a second to clear my mask and as I went to clear it, he reached for the mask to help me hold it. In that moment, my hand slipped and the mask popped off, letting the saltiest water flood into my open eyes. It burned badly and my bodies instant reaction was to gasp and quickly exhale. That exhale shot the mouthpiece out of my mouth and there I was 30 feet underwater, no goggles and unable to see with no ability to breathe. Had I not been panicking, I likely could’ve sorted out how to get the goggles back on and the mouthpiece back in, but I was already anxious from the dive and my body was unable to hold breathe any longer. My bodies automatic and survival responses kicked in and I took a huge breathe. I swallowed so much water and began to choke, making me gasp for air again, swallowing more water. My lungs were completely full of water and my panic was full fledged. I was frantically searching for the emergency inflation on my vest, simultaneously thinking that if I hit it, it was highly possible that I would get decompression sickness. I found the rip cord and pulled it because it was either I drown and die in this completely foreign country or I potentially get decompression sickness which had no guarantee of being fatal. I remember looking up as I ascended, dragging the instructor along with me, seeing the pin prick of sun grow larger. I was about halfway there when I heard my mind say “Close your eyes. This is it.” And truthfully, in that moment, my soul made peace with death. I called for my mother, who died when I was in college, asking for her guidance. I forgave anyone who had wronged me and apologized for anyone I had wronged. I thanked the earth for it’s gifts and for the first time in probably 15 years, prayed, to whoever was listening to safely guide me to the other side. I had thought quite a bit over the course of my life what my death would be like. I always wished it would be painless and without fear, peaceful and sure that I had lived a life to be proud of. I had never once thought it would be a scuba diving accident in the Red Sea, but truthfully I was not mad about that because this place was truly the most magical place I had ever been. What felt like 30 minutes was about 30 seconds and I woke up some moments later on the beach with the instructor giving me CPR as I began to vomit up sea water and foam. I remember looking at my hands to my shock seeing that they were a bluish gray color, clearly from the lack of oxygen. I continued to spit up water and was finally able to take a full breath. It was crackly and rough, realizing in that moment I still had quite a bit of water in my lungs. The instructor effortlessly picked me up and placed me in the bed of a pickup truck. I had no idea where they were taking me and not enough energy or care to inquire. Each bump the truck hit on the road, I felt the sea water in my lungs sloshing around in my chest. I was stretched out in the bed of this truck, staring at the blue sky that stretched on forever. I wasn’t sure if I was alive or dead and I felt so tired. I told the instructor sitting in the back of the truck with me that I was just going to shut my eyes and sleep for a second, to which he gently slapped my face and my legs, telling me that if I fell asleep, I would die. The sea water would dry out and crystallize in my lungs and I would likely choke on my own blood. He kept saying “Don’t listen to your mind. Do not fall asleep.” I fought to stay awake as the truck slammed on its breaks and a group of Egyptian men carried me into this bright white building. I said out loud “Is this heaven?” and the instructor quickly replied “You’re at the doctor.” The rest of the day was a blur, remembering bits and pieces of them flushing my lungs and eventually having me drink fresh guava juice to give me some energy to return back to my hotel room. They were so incredibly kind, so caring, and completely saved my life, which I thought had already been lost.

I think about that moment every day since it happened. I’ve never been so close to death and never believed the near death experience stories about the light at the end of the tunnel, but I’m here to report that for me, it was very real. For about a year after, I couldn’t shower or wash my face without my body instantly going into a panic attack. Anytime I had to hold my breath, an immediate fight or flight response would kick in. It’s been six years since that day and I still have anxiety swimming and being in situations where I have to be underwater. It’s much better than it was, thanks to time, but nonetheless still a shocking event that I cannot believe happened.

Over the years since that day, I’ve spent time in therapy not only speaking about that day, but many other traumatic events in my life that had caused lasting anxiety and fight or flight responses. There is quite a bit of abuse in my past and I’ve done a lot of work unpacking most of them, though some of the deeper wounds still fester. Ironically enough, as I began working with my current therapist on some of these wounds, she taught me a visualization technique that brought me to tears the first time I heard it. She painted a picture that I was a person on a ship. I was sailing along and suddenly a storm hits and the boat begins to sink. There is only one scuba suit on board and I have to put it on in order to survive. I put on the suit and begin to swim away until I reach the shore of a nearby island. I reach the shore, spit out the oxygen mouthpiece and say “I made it,” as I stand and begin to walk around the island, looking for materials to build a shelter. She stopped there and had me open my eyes. She asked me, “You survived the storm. What do you notice?” And I responded, “Well, if this were a real situation, the first thing I would’ve done upon reaching safety would be to take off the heavy scuba gear.” She slightly grinned and said, “Exactly.” An incredible mind, my therapist. She used this visualization as a way to show me that I had survived a number of traumas and had developed many ways and methods to protect myself from them, all very useful and valid reactions to trauma. The scuba gear represents those methods. This gear was immensely effective in the midst of the traumatic experience, but the traumatic experience was over. Keeping that gear on became a sort of subconscious punishment, a literal weight on my back to carry around constantly reminding me of what I had gone through. It became less of a survival medal around my neck and more of a cross I was forced to bear. The reality of it is that most, if not all, of us carry more weight than we should. Some of us feel like we have to, so we pick up weight for others. Some have it dumped on them without choice, and some don’t even realize that they’re carrying a weight. They just believe life is this heavy. It manifests in a million and two different ways, completely different for every experience. Frankly, life is heavy. I have felt crushed by the weight of my past more times than I can count, but it doesn’t have to continue being the story I tell myself, that my purpose is simply to make sure this weight never hits the ground. Just like the visualization, how was I supposed to efficiently build a shelter and survive if all of my energy was being exerted carrying the 30 pound oxygen tank I was no longer using on my back? And when it was presented to me in the form of a ‘what would you do’ scenario, I answered logically and instantly shook myself when the metaphor was explained. I cried after that realization, for all of the years I had spent breaking under this weight. Sure, it made me incredibly strong and resilient, but it also made me anticipate trauma at every corner of my life, keeping the scuba suit on “just in case.” For some, including myself, the traumatic experiences were one after the other for many years at a time. It takes a lot of energy to break that pattern and truly know that the storm has ended. It’s a beautiful thing to know how to protect yourself, but if we lock up and hideaway too much, we exclude ourselves from living, from experiencing, which is, after all, the point of this whole thing called life. Defense mechanisms are honest and they serve an absolutely vital purpose, but they shouldn’t become copy and paste solutions for the anticipated trauma of our lives. Allowing that defense mechanism to be the defense for the exact trauma it was created for is the key. After that, take it off. You’ll never know just how strong you are, how resilient you are until you take off the scuba suit. It served it’s purpose and now it’s time to regain your strength. There will always be storms and scuba suits, and the suit will be utilized when the situation calls for it, but there will be even more sunny days where we all deserve to feel the warmth on our skin, but we can’t do that if the scuba suit remains. I’ve integrated this visualization into nearly every aspect of my personal traumas, including the moment I literally had the scuba suit on in the midst of a near death experience. It seems simple, but sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective. When that drowning event happened to me, the first thing the instructor did was pull off the scuba suit so I could breathe, and that in and of itself, saved my life.

And so I pose the question: What are you feeling now? Where do you feel the sensation of the weight you carry? Is it in your shoulders, your back, your hips, your knees? Breathe into that space and know that you’ve been protected.

It’s time to take off the suit. You’re safe now.