Why I’m Afraid of the Ocean

I am an adult afraid of the ocean.

It’s just so powerful. The ocean is a huge life force, surging hungrily against the small landmass where I claim footing. It is full of mysterious life forms unbound by gravity, sloshing around in that dark, viscous liquid. 

And I’m supposed to paddle around on its the surface, dangling my toes, bobbing about like a goose? Honestly. 

I’ve tried to get over it. I went so far as to take swimming lessons when I was 30. 

My lessons were taught by a woman half my age, whose normal clients were toddlers. It was at a rec center in New Zealand. The cavernous place was made of steel beams and concrete and threw sounds around like a canyon. 

My teacher crouched beside me, pity in her eyes, as I sputtered and gasped. I did not feel graceful like the athletes cutting through the water in neighboring lanes. My flailing body had no buoyancy, my limbs slapped at the water like mallets. Turning my face up out of the plane of chlorine, I would gasp air desperately, then plunge my head back under, my lungs wringing out painfully against the strain of my arms and legs. Bubbles streamed out my nostrils, the droning effort of my exhalation magnified in the thunderous silence underwater. It was all hideous and humiliating.

But truly, the lessons helped. After a few weeks, I took my new skills to the beach. I swam up and down the shore in knee deep water. I felt like yes, maybe I could do this. Not an Ironman or anything, but I could swim out past the breakers, maybe. 

Embarrassingly, this was not the first time I learned to swim. I’ve learned over and over in my life. Starting with summer camp.

Summer camp is a brutal thing. An invention by tired, overwhelmed parents. Ritualistic competitions, heat exposure, austere nutrition consisting of tiny crackers and waxy cheese. I went to a day camp in Georgia, whose brochure boasted two pools, two lakes, canoes, one of those inflatable blob things, and a zip line where you could free fall like a tiny bird from a nest and smash into the water with your mouth still open in a scream. We rotated in groups from pavilion to pavilion at the ringing of an old brass bell, trying to stay out of the sun unless you were in water. This is where I learned to swim the first time, but not by personal ambition. It was a social imperative.

At the start of every summer there was a swim test. A theater of adolescent emotional damage. The requirements were basic: cross the swimming pool four times, then tread water in the deep end for 30 seconds. But every year it filled me with dread and loathing. I didn't really know how to “swim,” as defined in the sport of moving fast and efficiently through water. I knew how to swim in the way that an animal instinctively knows how to keep its head above the surface and thrash wildly until reaching safety. This usually got me across the pool enough times to satisfy the teenage counselors.

I was willing to endure this hazing ritual for an important rite of passage: access to the deep end. The sloping ten-foot deep end, warping like a lens when you plunged into it, was where all the Cool Campers hung out. Naturally. Whichever sandy haired boy I had a crush on that summer would be there. The popular girls in their swim team one pieces would be there. Children hung out in the shallow end. We eleven-year-olds clung to the lip of the deep end like real adults. 

The swim test taught me that if I could mimic a breaststroke for a few laps, I'd probably be fine in life. It was a searing adolescent reality: keeping your head above water and in-group belonging are what matter most. 

A pass allowed you to swim in the other, more exciting bodies of water as well: the muddy, opaque lakes. These holes in the ground were not clear and cool. They were brown with a lamina of hot water on top. We cherished these man-made water holes, the kind normally reserved for cows, because we didn't know any different. We hadn’t experienced the diamond clarity of glacier lakes, or the sparkling enormity of Michigan or Erie.  We were used to thick muddy shorelines that sucked at your feet, surfaces threaded with the tracks of insects, chartreuse slime blooming in stagnant shallows—and the ever-present danger of leeches and water snakes.

From an early age I knew only enough about swimming to survive, and just enough about water to expect no mercy.

In New Zealand, I shook off these past lessons, believing they were old stories. I would not be ruled by childhood fears. Gurgling in the shallows of Takapuna Bay gave me enough confidence to make a bold decision: I would swim to Hidden Beach, a nude beach accessible only by swimming. I was lured by the prospect of a beach all to myself, and it was just around the rocks from busy Takapuna.

The waves crashed on the towering fins of sandstone that blocked Hidden Beach from view. The breakers spilled and wept over the rocks, dragging away at their edges. I’d have to swim a half mile around this crag to get there.

I set out at low tide. I gave the rocks a wide berth, previous attempts having taught me the pain of cutting my feet against barnacles or being batted like a wiffle ball against underwater boulders. I arrived triumphantly at the hidden half moon of sand. I delighted in my nakedness and solitude. A white sand beach all to myself! I watched the tide creep up, slowly shrinking my sandbar, but I danced on the glittering surfaces, blissfully ignorant of the consequences. I finally got hungry, hitched up my suit, and headed back.

As soon as my feet no longer touched sand, my naivete became clear. The high tide waters hid the rocks underneath. The waves were disorganized and chaotic, gulping past and sloshing me back towards the cliffs. My muscles were tired from the journey in. The fatigue made me heavy in the water. 

The vicious surf crashed and sucked at the rocks, making it impossible to cut a straight line. I saw myself being drawn farther and farther from the shore as I struggled against the heaving water, throwing my arms out uselessly, kicking helplessly, losing my bearings. Was I closer? Is it just around this bend? How far had I come? How long had I been swimming? 

Right as I was reaching full panic, Takapuna Bay, my home base, slipped into view as I rounded the edge of the rocks. In my exasperated relief, I sucked down a lungful of water. I choked and coughed, my straggled breaths hardly audible over the deafening openness of water. The sunbathers and volleyball players on Takapuna beach looked so small, their laughs and shouts like Foley in a dream sequence. I was so alone out there. A tiny bobbing speck on endless blue. Still coughing, struggling to keep my chin above the surface, I fought a sinking feeling of exhaustion and doom. 

At that moment, I did not remember the words of my swim teacher, telling me to cut the water with the blade of my hand, or relax my neck to conserve energy. Instead, I remembered the swim test. 

It didn’t have to look good, it just mattered that I made it. This wasn’t about grace or form, but survival. I took in a shaking choked breath as big as my body could hold, and set my teeth. I plunged underneath the surface, kicking with all my might. I surfaced and broke into a skimming freestyle, clapping the water with determination. This time, there was no audience of peers. No swim teacher or counselor with pity in their eyes. No one to congratulate me when (if?) I returned to shore. I had to do this for myself. All my muscles burned and strained. I beat the water back, back, back. Every stroke was a little more proof. Every stroke my body and brain unlearned the script, “you can’t swim; you are too afraid”.

When I lifted my blurry, bewildered gaze, eyes swollen and stinging, I realized I had made it. Coughing and shaking, my feet mercifully found the bottom. I lurched from the water, flopping wetly down on hard sand, the waves licking my toes. 

I laid there panting, lungs thick with salt and a belly full of water. I was struck with the sharp understanding of how terribly that could have gone. 

The ocean didn’t care how many swim lessons I’d had. She didn’t go easy on me because I had been faking for belonging and acceptance. When you’re in the ocean, everything else falls away.

All that remains is the relationship between you and that elemental power. You must face the existential dread of it. And in that confrontation, you have to face all the terrors inside you, too. Which one is more scary, really?