Scuba Diving Fears and Coping with Age and Birthdays when you Travel alone

Last Updated on November 10, 2017 by Christine Kaaloa

oldsuit
Scuba Diving Fears and Coping with Age and Birthdays when you Travel

The water was flooding panic into my goggles and stinging my eyes. I blew out sharply to clear my mask.

We were pulling ourselves down by the anchor rope,  descending to the ocean floor. I was at the head of the group and the second in line. Going back up was not an option.

Was there a leak in my mask? 

My throat was dry. I swallowed hard on the spit in my mouth, while continuing to evacuate my mask of incoming water.

We lowered another foot. 

Everything around me felt foreign. The water pushed in, tightening around my body like a snug liquid suit. It required more effort to breathe.  My breath drew in harder. My ears, like an empty plastic bottle, getting compressed of its air, wanted to Pop! The pressure was now causing a splitting pain…

Clear mask, swallow spit, pop ears and remember to breathe.

Clear mask, swallow spit, pop ears and remember to breathe.

Clear mask, swallow spit, pop ears and remember to breathe.

It was a multi-tasking effort.

Panic grew as I attempted to keep my alarm rate down. I gulped… hard. My ears went Pop!

Ahhh, momentary relief.

dive hand signals
Some dive hand signals

Kevin, my PADI dive instructor swam to me, signalling underwater (example of dive signals here):

Everything okay?

“Okay”, I signaled back. A total lie. I was freaking out. I’d been having troubles with my mask at the surface earlier; this snowballed into a pre-dive freak out which only heightened with each foot we took down. Was the water in my mask a normal trickle or a flood? Were my fears and worries exaggerating my reality?

I couldn’t tell the difference.

Happy fucking birthday, Chris!

 

What does getting older mean and how do you celebrate it traveling alone?

What is age and why do I have to act like a number?

It was my first birthday on the road, it was my big 4-0 and I was spending it alone. Ugh. Spending my birthday by myself? Wasn’t sure if I could handle it. Happy 40? Still wasn’t sure I could handle it. When you pass your mid 30s, you feel like you’re pretty much over-the-hill. Numbers begin to feel like they lie, so you stop counting and avoid the friends who’ll remind you of it!

I’d love to say getting my PADI diving certification was something I’ve wanted to do all my life. It wasn’t. It was my last-minute resort to do something racy, adventurous and symbolic for an age I didn’t feel. Perhaps like how middle-aged men get a 20-year-old girlfriend or new sports car!

Living “older” was never in my equation. Never in my body or my life.

Marriage, children, mortgage, lifelong career, following a path of responsible “shoulds”… None of the above.

I’d been taking my time, marching to my own whimsical tunes in life, not congnizant of the fact my age was marching faster than me. Now here it was, staring me in the face. The grand number.

Was this something I should freak out about ? Perhaps,… yeah.

 

Diving into FEAR and embracing it.

Me, scuba diving?

As a Hawaiian Cancerian, I was born to love the ocean. Only one problem: I can’t swim. As a child, I remember lying on the bed as my mother squeezed ear drops into my ear, after each swim class.

Drip, drip, drip…. fizzzz

Alas, swimming lessons (along with children, white picket fence and a 401K) weren’t in my cards.

Now, floating in my scuba panic, I questioned the lunacy of my scuba decision, when it dawned on me…

Given a second chance, my outcome would be the same. Just as same, as it would be if I replayed my life and its choices. I’d be exactly where I was at that moment– holding onto an anchor rope, a single jobless traveler seeking herself, while clearing her mask of water and trying not to whimp out on life, scuba diving and solo traveling.

A reassuring calm set in. The calm of realizing you can only work with what you’re given in instances and if you life your moments- your fears, joys, struggles, etc…- fully, there can be no regrets.

No regrets.

This was my destiny.

 

‘Foreign’ is what we say, when we forget the ‘Familiar’

I remembered dreams I’ve had of exploring the depths of the sea and breathing underwater. I’d had these dreams since childhood and they never felt foreign or scary. As a matter of fact, the sea has always felt familiar to me …like home. Perhaps it’s having been raised on an island surrounded by water or remembering the comfort of the womb. ‘Foreign’ felt like ‘home’.  The ocean was no more foreign, frightening or familiar than any city or country I’ve traveled.

So what was I freaking out about?

This was just another journey in a life of rolling adventures and change.

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Trust yourself and you’ll be able to trust your surroundings better

Trust,”  my instinct whispered.

As a one-size-fits-all word, trust seeped into me as certain and solid as a safety net, melting away the muddiness of my panic and opening my eyes to the beauty around me.

If anyone tells you that there’s nothing like diving, there’s good reason.

 

Submerged, all the sea is tranquil, silent, mysterious and awakened… like a slow-motion dream or fairytale.

The ocean is a place, where a child-like wonder and exploration feels infinite and eternal.  The coral reef stood like magnificent jeweled sea palaces, harboring years of solitary moments, while building a house of dynamic and enigmatic sea life within. Above, was a glassy surface emitting a etherial, mesmerizing light. Below, the sandy floor held the impermanent stretch marks of shifting time and a school of radiant yellow and white fishes.

Through diving, I could experience this dream of breathing underwater.

Wide-eyed, I felt awakened to my oceanic dreams and the unfathomable depths and mysteries of the sea; and in that moment, my sense of time, worries and future fears all dissolved into an eternity.

Growing older wasn’t the end of life. Age is just a number.

As a diver and explorer, in the sea and in life, my heart would continue to beat young.

No, time didn’t matter. But being present each moment and savoring your experiences, matters.  Plugging through your fears, matters. Living your dreams and keeping an open sense of curiosity and adventure towards life… it all matters.

Don’t you think?

 How and where to dive in Thailand ?

You can dive for fun or get your PADI certification from anywhere across the world if you check out PADI’s Dive shop locator!  With a range of beaches and islands (here’sTravel Fish‘s list of Thai islands) offering excellent dive locations, Thailand was my starter country and diving packages came with the right price. You can find cheap flights to Phuket and Ko Samui or dive packages to Ko Tao, Ko Phi Phi,  Ko Pha Ngan or Krabi from tour agencies on Khao San Road in Bangkok.

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