Diver's Journal

Here's a little fact: I can't swim. I was very well aware of that. But when Life presented me an opportunity to go underwater diving, did I hesitate even for a second? Absolutely not. I dived right in.

I know that seems to be the dumbest decision anyone could ever make, but in my defense, the crew that took us to the diving spot assured us that we can go diving even if we have no swimming skills. And let's also not forget that the young blood in me does crave low-key dangerous experiences.

The experience was a very ambivalent one. The first thing that happened was that I was literally about to die (We'll get into the why and how... just wait). In the stage that followed (i.e. actual diving), I was having fun; enjoying myself, having the time of my life. And then, when I came back up, I experienced awful sea-sickness: an excruciating pain in my ear and a brutal headache– arguably because of my lousy health.

So, let me paint the scene here...

I'm sitting at the stern of a yacht, and my diving instructor (this bulldozer of a man) swims up to me and reaches his hands out. A boy standing beside me on the yacht (who also helped me into my diving gear) tells me to jump into the water. I jump in and desperately grab the instructor, so I don't drown myself. The instructor tells me to chill out; Relax; Get comfortable with the water around me.

Earlier on the way to the diving point, I had already been told that a lot of people freak out when they get into water, but I was fairly confident that I wouldn't. And I was right; I didn't freak out. I was able to pacify my nerves within a few seconds and then the instructor submerged me head-first into the water. I did, for an instant, get overwhelmed thinking how surreal it felt. But I stayed calm and let the reality of the experience seep in. "I don't know swimming," I thought. "But I'm still floating inside a real sea; with real fish; in their natural habitat."

I was just beginning to chill out when I realize water is seeping into my face mask.

What face mask, you may ask? The crew gave me the mask before diving. It covered my eyes and nose, allowing me to keep my eyes open underwater and keeping the pressure around my nose locked so I wouldn't breathe through my nose accidentally.

Flashback: before diving, a guide on the yacht had taught us all the things we needed to know before we went underwater. I remembered him telling us how if water gets into our face mask, we're supposed to look up and breathe out two times from our nose. He said that would automatically push the water out.

I look up and breathe out two times from my nose. But instead of pushing the water out, I just end up letting more water into the mask. I manage to still not freak out and try it again only to get the same result. Now I was freaking out a bit because the water was almost at my eye level at this point.

So here's the thing:

When you're in water, your body, mind, and heart are already freaking out. If you further manifest the same attitude, it leads to a horror of a situation. That's exactly what happened to me.

I dithered a bit, and my conscience immediately fled the scene. Left stranded in the sea with monkey-like survival instincts, I completely forgot two very important things:

• One: I forgot that there was a gesture I could use to tell the instructor that something was wrong (🫳🫴). I just remembered the sign for "take me up" (👍).

• Two; this one's dumb: I forgot that I was wearing a breathing gear in my mouth through which I was supposed to breathe. Instead, I started breathing through my nose which, in case you forgot too, was surrounded by saline water.

That was indeed life-threateningly dumb, but in my defense, I'd like to remind you that my mind –the wise Sapien– is not present at the moment. I'm not in control of myself; my body is listening to its normal monkey-like-survival-instincts, and a human's normal instinct is to breathe through the nose.

So I'm underwater, unable to get oxygen and losing my mind so I tell my instructor to take me up (👍). But my instructor only sees me being not-comfortable-with-water and does not classify that to be a reason good enough to take me up. He doesn't know that there's a problem, so he's just telling me to relax and chill out. And so, I figure out at the moment that I'm about to die in there.

Pessimistic response; I know.

But I can't breathe, and the person who was supposed to save my life isn't listening to me. I'm helpless because I can't even swim up to the surface myself (I do try though). I literally, actually would've died had I stayed there like that for a bit longer.

But I did escape death by an inch, as is evident from my presence online.

The guy finally noticed the water filling up in my mask. Understanding the urgency of the situation, he pushes this nozzle below my oxygen tank that lets pressurized air out, propelling me up at full speed.

As soon as I come out, I rip apart my mask and spit out the breathing gear, panting, coughing, wheezing as the instructor yells at me in Arabic.

I wonder for a second if I have actually gone crazy because I can't even comprehend speech.

The guy then shifts to yelling at me in English:

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY YOU SMILE? I TELL YOU DON'T SMILE AND YOU SMILE? THIS ISN'T A JOKE... YOU ARE SURROUNDED BY WATER ALL AROUND....YOU NEED TO REMAIN SERIOUS...."

Now I'm even more confused. What's he talking about? I smiled? I now realize what he must've meant: I must've gotten too overwhelmed in there and smiled without even noticing I smiled. The smile must have created a dimple which created space to let water into the otherwise airtight mask.

He looks at me (I'm not even able to gather my mind to formulate a sentence) "DO YOU UNDERSTAND? DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?" I nod my head. "Ok," the instructor says. He is about to take me back in, but I tell him to wait. I adjust my diving gear and decide at that moment that I'll have to keep myself in a delusion that everything is perfectly normal and diving underwater without knowing swimming is not actually that crazy.... only then will I be able to enjoy my experience. I literally lied to myself, thinking "I can't die. Dad paid them to keep me alive through the period I'm underwater. And diving isn't that big of a deal anyway. I need to chill out; it's literally just water; thousands of people dive every day here. No one ever died."

Those are the dumbest things I've ever had to tell myself. I do recognize every single thing that's wrong about this argument.... but I had to do that in order to calm myself down.

My diving instructor immerses me back into water after I recover from the chaotic experience I just had. This time, he gestures me every once in a while, asking "Are you okay?" (👌). He told me to equalize my ear pressure a bunch of times (🤏).

What's equalizing pressure, now you may ask. You know how the pressure underwater is higher than in air? Yeah, that causes pain in the diver's ear and to solve that, we were supposed to close our nose and breathe internally to create this pressure inside to cancel out the external pressure; that was termed as equalization.

Now here's the challenge: the breathing gear is constantly forcing air into you. So if you don't consciously force an exhale, it would automatically force an inhale. So when I closed my nose to equalize, the breathing gear started forcing an inhale and you can't really equalize while inhaling. So that was a bit difficult, but I managed to figure it out.

And so, I was having fun now. It was bizarre to consider how the fishes at the reach of my hand right now were real fishes in the natural habitat; As in, the ones that actually grew up in the actual sea and who eat other fishes and live in fear of getting eaten too.

I saw cool, big fishes as well. And I was seeing them right in front of me in real-time. Like, not through a glass aquarium or VR headsets; in reality; live. It felt like I was in an alternate reality. I touched the rocks and tried touching the fishes and scattered them in flower-like directions using hand gestures; a truly out of this world experience

 I spent the 10-15 minutes submerged in this aquatic realm mesmerized by the beauty that surrounded me. I caught a glimpse of the depth beneath me for a second and it was so encapsulating. Immediately filled me with bewildering energy; Panic Mode started finding its way through the depths I'd just buried it in, but I immediately quivered away the feeling. I decided not to look down again. I'd successfully imprisoned myself into the safety delusion.

So, after a while of swimming around, the instructor took me back to the yacht and as I surfaced, I started feeling a pain in my ear. I thought about telling the instructor that there was something wrong, but then I thought, what's he going to do? Take me up to see what's wrong? But aren't we going up anyways?"

As I surface up, my ear starts hurting more and more.

The moment my head emerges out of water, the pain immediately becomes unbearably severe. I hear this loud ringing noise. The voices around me are incomprehensible. You know that sound you hear when you cover and uncover your ears repeatedly in crowded places? That's what I was hearing right now I tell the instructor, and I see his lips move to form words, but all I hear is gibberish. That's when I first think, "Did my eardrums burst?" I swear to God, I legit thought I was about to go deaf, and these would be the last sounds I'll ever hear.

But thank God, after about 5 dreadful seconds, the voices started becoming a little comprehensible. However, it was still as if the volume was on low, so I was still a little worried that something is wrong and it's probably permanent.

Now as I start understanding what everyone was saying, I am immediately bombarded with questions:

Dad: "How was it?!"

My brother: "Go take off the suit, I need it, quick" (his size and my size were the same and there was only one suit of that size)

Mom: "What's wrong‽" (apparently I had a pretty worried look on my face... cuz duh... I thought I was going deaf)

My sister: "Why is your nose bleeding?"

Dad: "What happened?"

I can't process a response to anything until I finally start hearing properly. When that worry's out of the way, I finally comprehend everything around me one by one, and here are the dumb first words that thoughtlessly leave my mouth:

"I need to spit"

The breathing gear was washed with the saline water, so it still had the taste in it and thus, my mouth was filled with saliva. I spit into the sea. By now, due to the distressed look on my face, everyone is asking me the same question, "What's wrong?" So as I skim away my blood from my nose, my next words are, "Nothing; it's all good" Although my ears still hurt terribly, I'm content because I can at least hear properly; I knew I could tackle the pain which would eventually go away.

I change into dry clothes and go up in the sun so as to dry my hair off. My ear still hurts, and due to that, I also have a brutal headache now. As the diving session ends, people are called back onto the yacht and lunch is served. I skip lunch because I felt miserable. My mother gets worried and tells me to rest for a while. I take a 15–20 minute nap and wake up fresh. The ear pain is gone; headache slowly fades away.

My siblings also got ear pain, but apparently, it wasn't as severe for them as it were for me; although it did last way longer for them than it did for me. My sister got better after about 2-3 hours whereas my brother didn't completely recover before 2-3 days (he also had a flu though, so that further deteriorated his situation)

So yeah...

I was dying, and then having fun, and then going deaf, and feeling was sick; but I was fine later.

(Don't give me that side-eye; I'm obviously exaggerating the dying part. It wasn't that bad; at least not for long; the good parts dominated the bad ones. I had an astounding experience, Alhamdulillah)

All in all, a fantastic experience. If I happen to ever get another chance to dive, I most definitely would jump right at it again. I hope my health gets better by then though, so I can truly enjoy myself without getting sick afterward. And yeah...... after I got better on the yacht, I also went snorkeling. It was hard to convince my parents to let me go again after the scare I gave them with my headaches and all, but I managed to convince them. Fun experience. Would recommend without reservation.