say ‘scuba’… it sounds funny!

Today, for the first time in my life, I breathed underwater.

It was terrifying.

I am taking scuba lessons, along with Doc, K1, and B, in preparation for our vacation in Belize in a few months. Sunny beaches, tropical drinks, lots of hot vacation sex, seafood, rainforests, hiking, snorkeling… and scuba diving. Belize is supposed to be one of the best diving spots in the world (fishies! coral reefs! crystal clear water! something called, dear god, “Blue Hole!”), and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’d probably end up regretting it if I go there and don’t know how to dive.

Here’s the kicker: I’m scared to death to actually do it.

I have always had regular nightmares about being trapped underwater, usually in swimming pools; sometimes when I can’t hold my breath any longer and am about to pass out, I breathe in water and I choke, and sometimes I can actually breathe underwater, which doesn’t make sense and also doesn’t make it any less scary. When I’m not dreaming, I usually do fine in swimming pools and the ocean, so I don’t have a water phobia or anything of that nature.

After a lot of consideration, the thought of swimming with the fishes and coral reefs just slightly outweighed my completely unreasonable fear, so I told K1 that if she took lessons, so would I. B was kind enough to do all the research, and so now Doc and I each own a mask, snorkel, fins and wetsuit boots, know the names of all the equipment bits and pieces, and can use an incredibly complicated dive chart table thingy.

We watched a 3 hour DVD and answered a whole bunch of quiz questions this past week (K1 and I both experienced heart-pounding apprehension just watching the video), had classroom sessions last night and this morning, and this afternoon we got into the pool and learned how to use our equipment. Our first challenge was to breathe through the regulator (the thing you stick in your mouth that supplies your air), close our eyes, and go underwater for two minutes. It took everything I had not to panic when I first went under, but I screwed up my courage and took that first breath… and holy shit, I got air.

It got a little easier after that, but our instructor kept adding levels of complication to our tasks: use a mask, take the regulator out of your mouth and put it back in while underwater, clear water out of your mask, pretend you are out of air and use your scuba-buddy’s alternate air source to breathe while you both ascend to the surface, equalize the pressure in your ears. I found that I wasn’t enjoying myself at all because I was too busy worrying about remembering everything (breathe! equalize! let air in or out of the BCD!) to even look around while underwater.

The “golden rule” of scuba is to never hold your breath. I have learned a lot about pressure and air expansion and now understand all the horrifying things that can happen to your lungs if you are holding your breath while ascending (by the by, a lung doesn’t actually “explode” but instead somehow “collapses”). I’m doing mostly okay with the no-breath-holding thing, although I did catch myself doing it a few times. Practice, practice.

Our instructor is a nice enough guy; incredibly chatty (our first 3 hour classroom session could have been done in 1, easily) and makes lots of not-so-funny jokes, but he’s very at ease in the pool and a good leader. Plus, he’s the only one who really knows what he’s doing so I’m going to hang on his every underwater hand sign!

Tomorrow we will do 3 more dives in the pool, each with more and more levels of complication. Hopefully the basic stuff like breathing will start to become routine and I won’t have to think about it anymore.

So: I have not enjoyed scuba so far, and I am not sure if I will warm up to it. I think Kathryn feels basically the same as I do. Doc and B, on the other hand, are having a lot of fun and they both seem to feel much more at home underwater than K1 and me. One day of training remains, and then four “open-water” dives that we actually do at a lake in order to gain our official certification. I’ve accepted the fact that scuba just may not be for me, and that’s OK.

Whatever happens, I’m pretty proud of myself for trying.