Don't Sweat the Snorkel

Sometimes, just every now and then, I really wish I wasn't so very...well...me. 

This is not a further diatribe on the uneasy way that travelling has, of revealing ones inadequacies.  I have not, for a change, failed to live up to some moral code of my own making and then fretted for days over it. Morality isn't the issue. It's just all very well learning to accept who you are - embracing your unique 'you-ness' and all that associated fluffiness. But sometimes, when it really boils down to it - it would be just more convenient to be someone else. 

I will explain. Today we get up early, knock on S's door on our way out - and make our way to the pier. We are going on a snorkelling trip and I am really, really excited about it. We meet the family who are staying in S's other house, though only for a few days and we jump aboard the longtail fishing boat that will convey us to the good snorkelling spots near some of the smaller islands. It's just us, the couple from the other house and their grown up daughter, along with S and the Thai captain. We recognise him. He lives next door to us. It feels like one big family. 

That tone continues. In fact what marks these tours out against the others is the personal touches S brings to them. She never takes a group larger than eight and prefers four or five. The other tour leaflets tell us proudly that their boat can seat fifty. This is very different and, for me, much nicer. It feels like going out with friends. By the end of the trip we really are.

We sit in the boat munching various ridiculously fattening Thai breakfast delicacies, and staring out at the beautiful horizon which, though familiar from our deck where we are staying, now unfolds for us as we get nearer. Soon we have lost sight of the pier, then the shoreline and finally Koh Lanta itself. S points out rock formations and small uninhabited islands. She shows us the rocks known as 'the Bride of Frankenstein' because they look a little like a prone female form. Salt spray peppers my legs and arms. Sun glints on the water. It's idyllic. And we haven't even started the snorkelling yet. I am so looking forward to the snorkelling.

Eventually we stop. We are moored alongside a tiny uninhabited island, little more than a rock standing lengthways up in the sea. Hanging from the mangrove trees which cling, defiantly, to the side of the rock, narrow roots spread out like tentacles, are small dark shapes. Lots of them. It is not until one briefly unfurls its wings, apparently to scratch its nose, that I realise they are bats. I am hugely excited. I have never seen a bat so close up but here they are, hung upside down from the trees, shifting a little restlessly and opening their wings to reveal furry faces. Close enough to see, though not to touch.

"They are hungry" says S, translating for us a comment in Thai from the captain. "Though I don't know how he knows".

The look on the face of the younger girl, from the other family, Y, as she looks at the bats, makes me think that perhaps the news that they are hungry is not especially welcome. She keeps quiet though and busies herself with selecting a snorkel.  And in fact it is only that which drags my gaze, finally, away from the bats. The moment has come for the long awaited snorkelling.

Everyone picks up snorkels from a bucket and starts sifting through them, finding one which fits. The other family have been snorkeling before and are old hands. They sort through the different sizes with an air of expertise, and even decide to try out the flippers. 

"They are good in that they help you to go further" says S, looking at the flippers with a dismissive shrug, "personally I find they are just another thing to put on and it delays getting out there."

I am with S. I don't want anything to delay me. But I sit turning my snorkel about in my hands a little confusedly. How exactly do you know if it fits? Which end do you put in your mouth?

Thankfully S sees that M and I are working things out by watching the others and gives us a quick lesson. It's a good fit, we learn, if you can put the mask on, breathe in and the mask stays on your face without the elastic. I try it. Yes. Done.

We learn that spitting into the mask, smearing it around and then rinsing in the sea will stop it misting up. We do that. Yes. Done. The fact that I find spitting in public quite freeing is either a comment on our restrictive British culture, or a reflection of my natural filth - I don't stop to ponder on which. I get the mask on. I put the snorkel in my mouth. OK.

Actually it's a little uncomfortable. After my first breath the mask adheres to my skin, blocking my nose. That's the point, of course. But breathing through the tube with my mouth feels odd. I feel a little bit panicky. Probably just because I am wearing it out if the water. I take the mouth piece out, ignore the fact that I am suddenly just a little bit trembly,  and jump in.

Jumping in fills the mouth piece with salt water. I realise I have been rather too eager. Everyone else is climbing delicately down the ladder. I was keen to start of course, because I am excited about snorkelling. At least I think it was that. Or was there something else? Did I jump over the opposite side because I was impatient to get going? Or because I wanted privacy?

Something is definitely going on here. I am breathing much harder and faster than usual, as I try to shake salt water out of my breathing tube. Jumping in wasn't shocking - the water temperature is something akin to that of a warm bath. And treading water isn't all that difficult. I'm reasonably fit. And I'm a good swimmer.

'You're scared', says a scornful inner voice. I push it away furiously. I hate it.

Determinedly, I put the mouth piece back in and blow hard. The remaining water spurts out of the top in a rather spit laden plume. Good. 

A little encouraged I take a huge breath, allow myself no time to think and launch myself off, face down in the water. 

I don't see anything much - or I don't manage to process what I see. My vision clouds with panic. I take ragged, urgent breaths through my mouth, panting and gasping. I fill with fear. I come up suddenly, yanking the mask off and taking loud, terrified lung fulls of air.

I have been under the water for all of five seconds. 

Perhaps I should have known I would be scared. I am, I think savagely, always scared. I am scared of everything. When I was a child I was scared of my own toys. I was frightened of fireworks, I had nightmares about ghosts. As an adult I am no different. I am terrified of horror films, I am sleepless when alone, I get vertigo at heights, I am even scared of cycling. Why would I not be scared of snorkelling? When have I ever done anything and not had to face a whole buttock clenching, toe curling myriad of fears?

Even so, I tell myself, perhaps the mask is deficient. S has told us to swim back if we think the masks don't quite fit right as she has plenty of spares. I swallow my suspicions that the deficiency is in the wearer, with a little salt water to wash them down, and swim to the steps of the boat.

"OK?" says S, casually. She has stayed on the boat to make sure we are all OK before she will join us in a bit of snorkelling herself.

"Yes. I think so," I say brightly, adding, with a tell tale hint of apology, "I seem to be panting a bit though. Could that be the mask, maybe...?"

It isn't the mask. If course it's not the mask. But S, to her great credit, doesn't blink. She hands me another one.

"Try this" she says loosely, "though if you're panting...well it might be your mind.."

It is my mind. My mind is a traitor. When I am home alone, happily pottering, not worried, not fretful, it snakes its way in and reminds me to be frightened. It makes up horrific stories involving hanging bodies in the bathroom, messages written in blood soaking up from the carpet, faces in windows and mirrors, carving knives wielding themselves. 'It could happen' says my mind, 'you might be more tuned into the spirit world. You might be sensing something. It might be a premonition...'

My mind is my worst enemy. And everywhere I go, it follows.

"It probably is in my mind" I say, honestly, "I don't see how it can really be the mask."

There is some relief in admitting this, but I am deeply frustrated. As I listen to S's patient suggestions, ("just wear it in the air for a bit, then hang onto the steps and just put your face in - get used to it") I am inwardly cursing myself. This fear, like most, defies all reason. I want to snorkel. I have been looking forward to it. It's not deep sea diving - it's just swimming and looking. It's a plastic snorkel. Children use them. Mine is fluorescent green, for goodness sake. My first one was pink.

I do as S says - I hang onto the steps and I practice putting my face in. This is me, I think, as I come up again gasping and throwing vague and embarrassed apologies in the general direction of S, this is who I am. I am that girl who is always afraid of everything but who prides herself, instead, on doing it anyway. And yes. I do not, at any point, even consider that I am going to wimp out of snorkelling. I know I will do this. But I'm annoyed at the delay. And however admirable my pig headedness might be in diligently conquering my fears, I'm a bit sick of always doing it. Being somebody else, I think, looking enviously at the small snorkelling speck in the distance that is M, who has also never been snorkelling before, would just be easier. I would much rather be the all terrain, pragmatist, dare devil and general thrill embracer that I continue, for some reason, to make myself out to be. 

"Yeah, we've not done it before," I said back on the boat, shrugging dismissively, "but how hard can it be, right?" 

Even the "right" is a facade. It doesn't appear in my normal speech. I think it's something Brad would say. (See 'the joy of doing nothing').

"It's quite natural," says S, reassuringly, as I continue to struggle with my overactive panic reflexes, "we're not made to put our heads in the water and breathe through our mouths."

We're not, it's true, but nobody else has a problem. The captain asks S in Thai if a life jacket might help. Flooded with embarrassment (no pun intended) I try to explain that I'm not afraid of the water, but of putting my face in it. And given that to do so is necessary to snorkel, we seem to have reached a rather awkward impasse. As I refuse help I have an inkling that I understand the Thai imperative to avoid losing face. I am losing my facade so quickly it hurts. I wonder if S will think the less of me now she knows I'm an idiot.

When it happens, as was of course inevitable, I am not sure quite what it is that does it. Perhaps I put my face into the water and the shoal of fish that I see are so fascinating that I forget what I'm doing and swim out to follow them. Perhaps some instinct kicks in that forces me to breathe slowly. Perhaps it's sheer frustration and a sense of lost time. I never know, in these instances, what it is that drives my quivering nerve endings away from my internal panic trigger. 

But one minute I am clinging to the steps and gasping and the next I am away, breathing and looking down through the clear ocean water and there is enough of a delay in my realising what I'm doing, for me to have progressed quite some distance from my stance at the boat steps by the time I come up, look back and wave at S.

"OK?" she calls, worriedly.

I give her a triumphant thumbs up.

In total the whole thing took about twenty minutes from panic to snorkel. Twenty minutes to discover a fear you didn't remember to anticipate, grab it and finally smother it. Is that good going? I don't know. I don't know anyone else who has to fight it on such a frequent basis.

Rather ironically, I find snorkelling, once I am doing it, to be one of the most calming experiences I know of. Head in the water, my breathing takes on a natural slow and measured quality, something I have aimed at and failed to achieve on land during yoga classes. The gentle undulation of the water, the slow movement of the fish, the muted sounds of the sea filling my ears, the sunlight falling dappled, through the surface of the water and the sea plants waving slowly to me from the rocky ocean bed all combine with the natural wonder of the scenery to create a sort of quiet trance. 

I see shoals of blue green fish, glowing a different colour and exuding fluorescence with every beat of their fins. Bright, crimson rocks clump like porous flinty sponges among the quiet fish who rest close to them, hiding from predators. There are sea anemones which are black and spiky, but which hide gleaming silver sparkle in them - like gemstones. They look like something you might pin in your hair at a wedding. Something, whether fish, rock or plant, I am uncertain, glows bright blue in the light. It is an unearthly landscape. It is another world - and one which I can't get enough of. I am the first out of the boat at each subsequent snorkel stop, though I know better now than to jump in. After lunch I have barely finished my final mouthful of delicious green curry, eaten out of a tiffin box on a deserted white beach, before I am off again. And I am always one of the last to get back on the boat.

"I am so glad K liked it" says S to M later, "she was the keenest of all of us in the end"

I was always the keenest, I want to tell her, but I got sabotaged by my ridiculous mind.

We arrive home, sunburned and covered in salt and sand. There are marks on my skin where the snorkelling mask was. We shower ourselves off and relax for the evening. 

It has been, as S keeps commenting to us ever since, a really amazing day. S enjoys it so much she waives the price of the beers we drink, which are normally paid for over and above the tour price. I love snorkelling and would quite happily turn around immediately and do the whole thing all over again. We tell S, enthusiastically, to tell us the next time she goes out. To count us in. Me, M and my treacherous brain.

And did I have a better time for the initial set back? Did it add something, rather than detract from proceedings? I don't know. I suspect that the answer is yes, but to say life is better, brighter and more memorable for the daily fear fight is a little too easy. It's tempting and it wraps up a blog entry neatly but I think really it would be better not to feel it at all. 

To be somebody who is naturally braver would be infinitely easier.  

But I'm not them. I'm me. And until someone supplies the necessary potion or waves the relevant wand - I will remain me.

I could, however, make it a little bit easier. I could spare myself the pretence, both to me and to others, that I am anyone else. A pragmatic knowledge of who I am and how my brain works, along with an equally pragmatic admittance of these facts, well it might just save me a bit of time.

"I'm a wimp," I could say, "and everything scares me. But don't worry. I will do it. Just give me some time. I don't need long. About twenty minutes. That's how long it takes to fight a fear."

And on second thoughts - that twenty minutes - actually that's quite good going...

It's really not that shameful. Once you consider I'm me.