building blocks

First session out of the way and boy, did I mess up on the mask changing skills!

Un-deterred but pretty angry with myself, the next lesson went a lot smoother. I had Chris and Ralph again and this time every skill I was taught was accomplished first time- not bad for a guy afraid of water.

At this point, the "positive thinking" people might say "stop thinking of the bad things- be grateful for the achievements!" (Chris herself holds a masters qualification in Neuro-linguistic programming which I believe she did to assist in teaching 'problematic' or 'difficult' scuba students)

You'll find them in the thesaurus under 'terrified', by the way.

I've spoken to others about this kind of thing in the past. Sadly, their attitude has been remarkably similar. Here's the example.

"I'm scared" says the student.

"There's no need to be- let me help show you how to scuba dive" says the helpful instructor.

"Wow" says the student, "that was easy! Thanks for showing me! I'm no longer scared, thanks to your easy to follow methods and teachings!"

Wouldn't it be great if life was actually like that? Sadly, it isn't. We don't live in a world of TV adverts where the brand name t-shirt wearing person invades your home with a cheery smile, shows you the carpet cleaner, and you never look back from that day on. Conquering any negative thought from mild apprehension to outright fear is difficult and a long process.

Rome wasn't built in a day, as several of the teaching staff have told me on several times.

Okay, maybe I am being a bit too negative- everyone around me tries the "wow! look how well you've done! That's really great! You've come a long way in just a few weeks!" and really, whilst I am genuinely grateful for the support, a voice in the back of my head keeps saying "yes, but I'm still afraid"

Am I normally pessimistic in nature? Believe it or not, no- I'm usually very optimistic. But when facing a life long terror of the dark wet stuff, and coupled with this a fear of failing the entire course has now also arisen, I have to admit to myself that this isn't easy.

But its not impossible.

For that reason I keep turning up, keep going, and keep swimming- and enjoy the moments when they come. I even tried work at home. After my disastrous show at the mask changing, I started filling the bowl in my bathroom full of lukewarm water and immersing my face to see if I could open my eyes.

Half an hour later, I did. It seems silly- I know a lot of people who can swim far better than me but won't open their eyes underwater. It feels wrong for them, uncomfortable, even scary- but that's one aspect of the water I have no fear of. I needed to do this for lesson three, anyway. The dreaded 'no mask swim' was looming, and I attended that night with a bad case of rattlers in the stomach.

Lesson three brought another departure from the pattern so far. Chris was concerned I was turning her into a psychological anchor and wouldn't dive with anyone else- so on the night I got my rig prepared, loaded up, and at literally the last minute she produced Mick S and said "off you go boys- have fun".

And I did! Mick S was doing his dive instructor course so he's not as experienced as Chris, but he is excellent in his style. Calm, down to earth (in water? That's original!) He reviewed a number of skills I'd done with Chris and Ralph, and then took me for new skills including one I'd been dreading.

Remember my almost failure at the mask changing? Now I had to do it again, but swim across the width of the pool in a 'no mask swim' and put the mask on at the end. First time- not bad. Undeterred, I did my usual request to do it again for my own satisfaction and second time produced (in Mick's words) a 'belter' of a skill qualification.

At that point a flash bulb went off. Or was it my smile? Couldn't tell for sure- it was one or the other. Major skill, lots of trepidation, and I beat it! Whilst I'm not going to delve into the sort of Michael Bay movie fist thumping and male bonding rituals of Hollywood actions movies (I am English, after all- and we don't do that sort of thing), I did feel an exhilaration that flooded my spine...Or was that the water dripping down the inside of my BCD?...and didn't stop grinning until the end of the lesson.

This un-reachable target was now becoming achievable.

A few skills remained to learn and I would take them on in due course, but one final, great hurdle awaited me.

The swim test.

Before I was allowed to do my open water dives (for real) I would have to do two aspects of a swim test.
1- float for 10 minutes on my back or tread water for the same
2- do a continuous 200m (8 lengths of the pool) swim

Me being me, I've never swum 200 meters in my life and the thought of doing the swim test is...more than a little un-nerving. However, in my strength, I'd conquered some of the hair-raising tests on the course so far, I kept going back, never once wanted to quit, and was determined to do it if it killed me (okay, that's a bad analogy)

I began to search for encouragement in other blogs and articles on the net. Someone, somewhere, must have advice about the swim test for the open water course! Sure enough, I found a reference in one man's description of his experiences. Eagerly, I speed-read his article until I found the section on the swim test and it said....

"Of course, you HAVE to be able to swim to learn to scuba dive! There's really no point at all learning to dive if you can't swim! I mean, being able to swim like a brick will get you to the bottom, it just won't get you back up again- HA HA HA..."

...thanks. Really. That's great. Very encouraging. I felt gutted, as if the odds were once again stacked against me.

But I wasn't about to quit. No matter how many set backs, I've never quit yet.

I'd been building on success after success, conquering fear and difficult (for me) skills, and I wasn't about to give up now. Despite everything, this was my ambition, my plan to not only enjoy scuba diving (did I just use the 'enjoy' word?) and conquer my fear.

And it was working!