That Sinking Feeling....
I let go and both me and my heart sank. “I’m going down”, I sputtered, water in my mouth and fear in my heart. My feet desperately tried to find the bottom to stand on, though my brain said it was stupid to do that in deep sea. I floundered and tried to reach for the ladder, when I heard him say “hold my hand”. I looked in the direction of the voice. Our eyes met. This was during a trip to Redang Island in Malaysia with friends. The trip involved a lot of snorkeling. And my relationship with water has always been uneasy. My experiences with seemingly innocent rounds of boating have become unintentionally adventurous in the past- precariously balanced narrow boats which rocked with every move, boats with a slow leak where we had to constantly bail out water. Add to this my penchant for watching ship wreck movies in my teens, water was just plain dangerous to me. Yet, given that I didn’t know to swim and the concept of life jackets was nonexistent in boating, I thought my fear was sens...