I've always loved swimming. Growing up in Seattle where there is water everywhere, my mom firmly believed that it was necessary for children to learn to swim as early as possible, so no matter how poor we were, she would enroll us all in swim classes at the YMCA. I always thought of swimming as a fun, refreshing activity, and the last time I was afraid of sinking was when I was learning to float at, like, age 4. I'm very buoyant now and fear of water doesn't even register in my mind.
Which is why it's such a mystery as to why I am deathly afraid of entering or exiting a boat. It's something I struggled with at summer camp, and I am ever grateful for the fellow camper who stayed behind to steady the boat after all the other girls had scampered away, so that I could get off without the boat tipping. I don't know how long it would have taken me to get out otherwise. I'm not scared to be in a boat, and falling into the water doesn't frighten me at all. So why is it so pants-crappingly terrifying to me to get into a tippy boat or try to get out? Why do I squeal in fear like a teenage girl, in a manner that would irritate even me?
Even walking up the gangplank of a large boat causes me to feel a lurch of terror. I've had wonderful opportunities to get onto larger boats belonging to the Boy Scouts, or both huge and smaller cruise ships, or ferries, and it's always the same. I want to get on that boat, drat it, and that's what keeps me moving forward. But as I'm moving along the platform and seeing the water surging beneath me, I can't help but feel the chill in my blood.
A few years ago, I decided to face this phobia. I signed up to take a rowing class that skimmed out on Lake Sammamish in Washington State. I had a friend who was taking a more advanced class, and she introduced me to the instructors and the other students she knew. The rowboats were a lot narrower than I had imagined. I never went to a college with a rowing team, so I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of a canoe. I didn't do any research, I just jumped into the scary situation with both feet. But seeing the boats up close, and understanding how unstable they must be, caused my fear to intensify.
The first session was OK because we used rowing machines and stayed on land, just getting used to the movements and the feeling of rowing. The second session, I got called in to work to cover a later shift. I was new and desperate to ingratiate myself to my employer, so I ditched my rowing class and worked. But I missed the session where we would have gotten into boats for the first time.
For the third session, I got off my job as a receptionist, wearing nice office clothes, and zoomed toward Lake Sammamish, or rather, crawling through the dense Seattle Traffic. I watched the clock ticking off minutes while I sat in traffic and felt my stress rising. So I was already thrumming with anxiety when I strode into the boathouse and dove into the changing booth to put on my rowing clothes and to apply both sunblock and bug spray. I was ten minutes late when I emerged and the others students were already in the boat, waiting. The instructor was very vocal about her disapproval. I tried to explain that I had gotten there as fast as I could, that I had been stuck in traffic, but she would have none of it. She escorted me down to the dock, and I was already in a low mood level from the pressure I had put on myself to get there on time, and the tongue-lashing the instructor had given me when I was late. Maybe the anxiety I was already feeling factored into what happened next.
It took me a long, long time to get into the boat. Everyone was there, waiting for me, and they had done it the previous week so they knew what it was like to sit in this kind of boat. Negative thoughts started sneaking into my mind. The boat was too small. My weight would sink it. I needed to lose weight, and that's one of the reasons I was there, but would anybody understand that? Would they forgive me when I capsized the boat, and everyone ended up in the drink? I would put my foot in, but when I tried to shift my weight onto that foot, I would feel the water give under the boat's frame, feel the boat slide on the liquid surface, and I would transfer my weight back to the dockside foot. I tried over and over, with the instructor barking orders at me to just get in, just get in the boat, and the other students giving in to heavy sighs and expressions of exasperation. I probably should have just quit, walked back up the dock, and gone home. But I was determined to get in that boat come hell or high water (pun intended) so I stayed there, fighting back tears of shame and fear, trying again and again.
At long length, I succeeded in getting into the boat. I didn't sink it, and I didn't capsize it. The small craft probably rode lower than usual in the water, but everything seemed fine. I began to get a feel for how to steady the boat using the oars, and my anxiety started going down. Maybe this would work out after all.
But I was still a week behind in lessons, from ditching the previous week's session in favor of work. (That's another thing I thought people would understand - the need to work over attending class. No luck.) The instructor shouted at me to stay in sync with the others' strokes, and even the other students were trying to politely ask me to keep the same rhythm. My fellow students tried as hard as they could to be polite in their requests, and I appreciated that, but the instructor kept rolling her eyes and commenting on how obvious it was that I had missed classes, and how I needed to work harder, all of which only made me flustered and caused me to mess up more. At one point I gazed longingly at the lake's shore and envisioned jumping out of the boat and swimming away. (Here's the funny thing about my weird phobia: I'm not scared to jump out of a boat, and I'm not scared of a long swim. I honestly do not know why I'm terrified to get in and out of boats.) But I figured that if I purposely jumped out of the boat, it really would capsize, and that would piss everyone off more. And I would still have to walk to the boathouse in bare feet to pick up my clothes and stuff. So I stayed in the boat and tried to endure my blooming backache and buttache and the pain in the sides of my legs from the sharp corners of the boat's components. It really was the most miserable boat ride I've ever experienced.
When it came time to actually get out of the boat, I did better. It took several tries, but I wanted out of that boat so bad. I went and grabbed my stuff and waited for my friend to be done with her rowing practice, but I probably should have just walked out. I thought about demanding my money back, since I didn't pay $90 to be yelled at and treated rudely by an instructor, but who knows? Maybe that's just how rowing culture is. And I was feeling down on myself enough to start the self blame. I really must have been terribly annoying. But I still went home angry and didn't go back for the fourth session. I thought I would learn to kayak next, but I never did.
Because if I learned one thing from this experience, it is that facing a phobia in public can be overwhelming and anxiety-inducing and terribly depressing, and it can end up having no effect at all, no matter how bad you want to improve. Still. I will certainly try again in the future, mainly because nothing is more peaceful and beautiful than skimming across a lake and being out on the water, and then I will have another tale to tell.
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