Thalassophobia

by Payton Justrich

I stand on the edge of the sandbar. Frigid water dances around my waist. I raise my arms to make sure that the rose-colored snorkel mask I’m wearing is secure. Camille swims up to me and steps on the sandbar. I hear Valerie and her boyfriend, Antonio calling us from ahead, but I don’t look up to find them. I just continue to stare down at the blue water that threatens to envelop me; it seems to be succeeding so far. I stand frozen, too cold, and too scared to move even another inch.

“You scared too?” Camille asks. “Olive?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sorry…” 

“Guys, come look!” Valerie calls excitedly.

“We’re coming just give us a second Val” Camille yells back. “I can’t believe they’re already so far out there.” 

For the first time I look up to see where they are. “Yeah.” Valerie and Antonio are way out there and they’re fine. Everything is fine. I just have to step off and then I can swim over there and when I reach them, I can see what’s got them so excited. I take in a deep breath and shakily release it. 

“You ready?” Camille asks. I reply with a nod, realizing that I am biting down on the snorkels’ mouthpiece, unable to properly grind my teeth. 

I glance over at Camille before we both step off the sandbar and begin swimming towards Valerie and Antonio. The cold water slaps me as I suddenly go deeper into it, leaving my skin stinging. The seafloor falls farther and farther away. Schools of fish swim a little too close for comfort, as if they have no fear or even concern about us invading their home. The kelp grabs my foot and for a second I panic, scared that I will be dragged down, deep into the ocean to drown. And in that moment, I am reminded why I was so apprehensive to leave the safety of the shore. 

When I was five, I went to the beach for the first time. My two older siblings had immediately run into the ocean with their boogie boards. My parents sat up a spot of us, laying out the towels and putting up the umbrellas. I sat in a little wagon watching them. My dad went out to the water to watch my siblings and my mom took me out of the wagon and sat me on the towel next to her. 

For a while I just played in the sand, building castles, digging out moats, creating bridges and tunnels. Eventually, my dad and siblings came out of the water to eat sandwiches and watermelon that we had brought from home in a huge cooler, along with waters and some juice pouches. My siblings recounted the tales of the waves they battled, arguing about who caught the biggest waves and showing off the bruises they got as battle scars. I sat quietly, sipping on a Capri-Sun in between tiny bites of a turkey sandwich. When everyone finished eating, my siblings ran back into the sea immediately, as my mom yelled out for them to be careful. My dad beckoned me to go with him and so I did.

I clumsily toddled off towards the ocean, holding on as tightly as I could to my dad’s hand. When I reached the water, I was instantly struck by how cold it was. But I took another step, excited to see why everyone else seemed to have so much fun. 

I had barely taken three steps into the water before I was attacked by the waves. I fell onto my butt and as I sat there, I saw more waves coming. They seemed to grow bigger and bigger. When the next wave hit me, I was sent tumbling. They pulled me under, twisted me around, turned me in circles. I know it couldn’t have lasted for more than a minute or two and I was still very close to the shore, but it felt like I had been deep under the ocean for hours, sinking further and further down. I was disoriented, unable to find the surface or gain a footing. The water became thick snow that I was trapped under. The sand once just a minor nuisance that got everywhere, became a billion tiny daggers that cut any skin that was unfortunate enough to scrape against it. The rocks became fists punching and feet kicking. The seaweed became slimy, the slimy hands of a monster trying to pull me further down. The surface became a blinding light that I could not reach. When I finally got pulled up by my dad, I went running back to my mom on the shore, crying and coughing as I struggled to catch my breath. 

After that happened, I would spend every future beach day with my family on the shore, happily building my castles as my siblings swam further and further into the ocean and learned to surf with absolutely no fear. But my fear only grew stronger as I grew up. I learned about sharks and eels and stingrays. The many more fish whose sting or teeth or both could be deadly. I learned about the depths of the Mariana’s Trench and that more than 80% of the ocean is unexplored and therefore unknown. I learned about rip tides and undertow currents. I saw the effects of oil spills and pollution on the water, with enough trash filling the ocean to create a new island. I saw huge tsunami waves destroy towns on the news.

Yet, when my friends would invite me to the beach, I would still go with them. I would just sit on the shore and watch as they swam around laughing and splashing each other occasionally.

Sometimes I would build up enough courage to step into the water, usually only up to my calves, standing where the waves come and go but do not remain. Granted, this caused many embarrassing stories as I would panic over nothing. Like the time I stepped into the sea and immediately spotted a small dorsal fin swimming up towards the shore. I screamed “shark!”, grabbed the person closest to me, which luckily was one of my friends, attempting to pull them out with me, and booked it to dry sand. By the time I calmed down I turned around to see all my other friends still in the water erupting in an uproar of laughter. The small dorsal fin that had sent me into such a state of panic turned out to be a harmless Leopard Shark. At least I was right in a way; it was technically a shark. I didn’t go back in the water that day. 

Over the years I seemed to collect these embarrassing beach stories that were mostly caused by my own irrational panic. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve lived in a coastal city your whole life with a fear of the ocean. 

Now here I am, fifteen years since that first trip to the beach. I have managed to step off the sandbar into the vast deep ocean with nothing to protect me from the wildlife or drowning except this rosy snorkel. I figured I could use the tube that I was breathing through, or maybe even the goggles, to hit a shark in the nose and buy myself some time if I had to. I had a brief scar when a piece of kelp wrapped around my ankle, but I got it off now and I’ve already made it this far. I was aware of how easily I could be sent into a spiral of fear and panic at any moment: this is an unfamiliar beach to me, the water is much deeper and I am much further into it than usual, there’s a colony of sea lions nearby and who knows how many sharks could be around, there’s huge rocks on either side of me and though they seem far a bad current could easily send us towards one of them and slam us against the rocks. But for now, I consider getting to this point to be a victory in and of itself. It helps that the ocean is much prettier than I previously thought; pretty enough, in fact, to assuage all my anxieties, at least momentarily. 

Camille and I reach Valerie and Antonio. They look up to talk, “Guys, come look over here” Antonio says beckoning with his hands. “They’re so pretty, you have to come see!” Valerie adds.

We all dip back under the surface and as I follow Antonio and Valerie’s pointed fingers, I see a school of bright orange fish. The Garibaldi: the state fish of the Golden State. It seems appropriate given that they could be considered golden themselves and were just as vibrant as the states flower. They might as well have been California Poppy’s that have faces and the ability to move through a contrasting blue expanse on their own without the help of wind or some other force. 

We fly above them, just close enough to be able to reach out and touch some. After watching Antonio and Camille each touch one without being bitten in return, I slowly reach out. I lightly graze the head of one of them and it remains unflinching, completely unbothered by my touch. 

It feels surreal, being here, able to see the mounds and dips of the ocean floor, beautiful fish within my grasp. I had spent so much time afraid to be here, at the mercy of the ocean and all its creatures. Everything was clearer, more vibrant than I had expected, especially from a pair of dirty goggles. It felt as though we were discovering a new world full of wonders more wonderful than anything I could have imagined.

Suddenly, I start to feel like I’m not really here. The cold water numbs every nerve and I physically feel nothing. It’s as if I am in the safety of my home, instead of these unfamiliar waters, playing a video game with a first-person perspective and stellar graphics. Reality seems to drift away from me as my mind and body disconnect. I chalk it up to a stress response; I’ve ignored my anxiety too long and this is the coping mechanism my brain has chosen. I slow down and remind myself to focus on breathing. 

One by one, Camille, Valerie, and Antonio all slowly faded from my vision. They must have decided to keep swimming further from the shore to discover what else the ocean has been concealing. I remain with the school of Garibaldi. I feel safe and warm swimming above them. They come closer and closer until I am surrounded all around by the school of fish. I let their vibrant orange hue envelop me even as it becomes blindingly bright. But then they keep swimming up into the blue sky, leaving me here. I was starting to think that I could make friends with the fish from the school of Garibaldi; they seemed nice, but they all left me alone. I can only be disappointed for a moment as another school of fish comes up to me. They aren’t as vibrant as the Garibaldi, but they are still beautiful in their own right. But they leave me too. Many more wonderful creatures come and go. But they all eventually leave me for the sky. Even the kelp has started growing high into the sky like giant Red Woods. A few more fish pass by me on their way up, but they’re not in schools anymore and it seems like their teeth have started to grow sharper and their overall appearances more confusing and frightening as time goes on. And the blue sea grows darker, from the translucent aquamarine with white foam on top as it was when I first stepped foot into the sea earlier today, to a deeper cerulean. Then it keeps growing darker to a navy and darker still until I am left in a black abyss, alone with no more fish around to make friends with and no clue how to get back to the beach.