December 18, 2010

"Breaking Rule #1"

The worst part is I can’t breathe. Never a victim of asthma, my chest is constricted, and it feels as if a very large hand has a vice grip on my heart and lungs. I hyper-ventilate when I’m driving places, in the middle of the night at about 3:00a.m, and when I wake up at 6:00a.m. When it happens in the car, I blast a song with lots of bass—to make myself feel like I’m not falling apart, to ground myself, and give the sensation an entity. In bed, I tell myself coaxing things like “it’s going to be okay,” and “you’re fine.”

This energy is nervous energy—like just before jumping out of a plane. “Whatever you do, don’t kick,” said the six-foot Texan with halitosis. I smiled lamely, not really understanding what he meant until the ground disappeared from beneath me. That horrible sensation was the worst I’ve ever felt. Being unable to hear myself scream with the atmosphere punching my face did not, as some had promised, release fun endorphins into my system. Instead, free falling with nothing to stop me from becoming a ketchup stain on the earth but a flimsy parachute and the gross guy I was strapped to is what I imagine hell to be like. That, or peeling potatoes and doing dishes for eternity.

This feeling is anxious energy, like when I was scuba diving in Fiji and didn’t know what I was doing.

“I have only ever dived with my husband, and he always took care of everything,” I admitted to the boat captain, a slight twenty-something girl with pony-tailed curly hair who seemed meek, but would turn out to be the boss. She translated for the Fijian man who was to take me under water. I did not know how to inflate my buoyancy compensator (BC), or read my gauges, or hook up my regulator. All I had ever needed to remember was the ear-popping thing and to never panic under water.

The ride to the wreck was a good forty minutes, and two American ex-pats were bragging to each other about knowing whose boat was whose, whose million-dollar villa was the best to party at, and what they were going to do about their dog when they had to return to Denver for ski season. I was thoroughly irritated by their endearment to the captain, calling her “girl” and “blackie,” but she didn’t seem to mind, fake smiling when she had to, but mostly ignoring them. Rather than being offended on her behalf, I was able to concentrate my thoughts on the aching rhythm of blood pumping through my chest.

I practiced the hand signals in my head. The ‘cut off his head’ motion was for if I couldn’t breathe due to lack of air. The two finger wrist flip was for if I needed to share air. The thumb bob was for if I needed to resurface. I wasn’t afraid of sharks, having seen lots of them up close. Instead, I was afraid of the bends—the inability to control my vertical movements because I’d never had to gauge how much weight and air I needed to continue on a steady course. I wanted to talk with my dive buddy, to create a more buddy-like rapport so that he wouldn’t end up sending me to the hospital, but we smiled at each other dumbly instead.

As we slowed to a stop, I reconsidered going in at all. A recompression chamber in a third-world country did not seem like something I could get to in good time. If I lost control and flew to the surface too quickly, a bunch of tiny bubbles could form in my blood, paralyzing or potentially killing me. Plus, it would be all my fault for not reviewing the stupid PADI book I had brought with me but failed to read. While the Americans deftly made adjustments to their tanks and hoses, laughing about the last few times they had done this dive, I kicked myself for not being more friendly. My buddy looked expectantly at me after checking and re-checking my equipment. But I couldn’t judge whether he knew what he was doing. At the last minute, the boat captain gave him a look, pointed at my apparatus, and said something to him in Fijian, to which he gasped, then hastily unscrewed something, flipped it over, then re-screwed it back on.

What the hell was I thinking? I told the captain I didn’t want to slow anyone down—that I could just stay on board, that I would enjoy the view from on deck just as much as being submerged, and she laughed, her pony tail jauntily bouncing at her back. She told my buddy something else in Fijian, and I was thrust into my gear, buttoned up, and thrown off the side of the boat.

Floating there, I remembered rule number one—never panic in the water—while my dive buddy affixed my mask and thrust the regulator into my mouth, deftly (and wordlessly) holding up my deflator thingie in the air, causing me to go down.

The finger between two islands looked entirely different under the particle-less water. Unlike Hawai`i’s salty but still clear visibility, this was like being in liquid glass. I hung on to the anchor chain as we descended, and my buddy’s ebony hand did not falter, did not release mine the entire time. With his other hand, he adjusted my BC, keeping me by his side as we carefully and slowly descended to the bottom of that muted, voiceless depth. "Just breathe," I told myself.

Eventually, the manic pounding in my chest went away and I could enjoy the black coral branches and grape-like bunches of seaweed; the bright pink and green corals. I toured a barnacled wreck with brilliant anemones that swayed with the current as the schools of silver needle fish zig zagged past us. And it became one of the most intimate experiences in my life. Even when the heat between our hands became a bit much and I wanted to let go for just a moment, his sure grasp told me that this was not an option. We were joined throughout this journey whether I liked it or not, and mostly, I liked it. He pointed out dragon fish and eels to me, took me through a cave lined with opalescent coin-like creatures, and waited while I examined spindly red branches.



Now I keep waiting for that moment to come—that sense of ease, of connectedness, of enjoying the view. Instead, I’m stuck with this fear—this being at the edge of a precipice with the wind blowing at my back, this having to jump out of the plane alone, be at the bottom of the ocean alone. I’m literally nauseous, constantly in the middle of an anxiety attack, and I worry about the stress I’m putting my body through—whether my heart will ever go back to pumping at a normal speed.

I repeat that I can take care of myself, that eventually I won’t miss my ex, who has been by my side for the past ten years. That one day, I might fall in love again and have babies. I tell myself that I'm not too old to start over again, that I am a smart, beautiful woman, that I’m lovable, and that I have good friends, but even as I write this, the tears are flowing and I can’t catch my breath or swallow this sense of falling and not being able to stop. I tell myself that moving back home—a home now empty of everything of his—won’t break my heart, won’t undo me completely, won’t send me to the recompression chamber, but who knows what will happen.

I know I am panicking; that this is the first rule of survival. I am a deer in headlights, destined to become road kill if I don’t regain my fight or flight instincts. I have to get hold of myself before I become un-tethered, splattering into a terrified, out of control, mad woman mess. But the grip on my torso hasn’t let up in two days. The talking to myself hasn’t worked, and my cheeks are becoming wrinkly with moisture.

I know I have to trust that, like Max Ehrman says, “the universe is unfolding as it should,” that this is all part of the process, that I am held, and that everything really will be okay. And I know that it’s true—that I have always been cared for, that this will continue, even when it feels like I’m completely alone. This is my salvation—the only way to slow my pulse and stop the crying. So I repeat to myself, “you are loved, I love you. The universe loves you:” my incantation for sanity. And I wait for the magic to work.