Fear vs Pride: A Diver's Perspective
Sometimes, the water looked unforgiving. Small waves, but no ripples, its stillness reminded me of a screen door looking out into blackness - deceptively transparent, but solid and able to leave red marks upon contact. The board was also misleading, its baby-pastel mint green color belying its callusing, raspy texture and its shocking solidness when it hit one's foot. It was only in Diving class that I discovered how many bruises I could get in one week, and only there that I really understood the principles of surface tension and gravitational acceleration. With each injury I would parade my bruises, showing off my battle scars, downplaying the pain and my growing fear so I could feel stronger, a Viking warrior enduring cold, contusions, and wet.
"The dive we're going to learn today," our perfectly dry instructor told us, "is called a reverse dive. You use the regular forward approach, but after you jump you bring your knees up and your shoulders back to reach towards the water. Straighten your legs, and you're in. The best way to learn it is to just do it. So do it."
My hands shook slightly, my feet almost slipped on the moldy looking cement, and my nose slid over the alerting, icy, clear smell of chlorine as I stepped up to the board. I walked firmly, until I teetered slightly on the second step. Recovering barely in time to jump, I reached for the ceiling, and then leaped again, throwing my shoulders back and bringing knees up. My body panicked as I found myself upside down and facing the wall, my tree stumps of legs bearing down on me and impossible to retract. They forced my back onto the water like frozen bread dough into a vat of oil, and with the impact, my face lashed into my wooden legs. In my semi-conscious state, the water felt viscous and full of ambiguities.
Was I falling or floating? sleeping or awake? alive or dead?
I surfaced, and air rushed into my lungs with a slap to my brain. An egg sac swelled within my cheek, small spiders tingling and probing, about to burst through. "Are you OK?" the instructor asked. Though I nodded, a tear slid down my bulging cheek. Ice calmed the spiders' frenzy, but it did little for my confidence.
For four weeks in class, I attempted the dive, at least twice a week. My brain was resolute, refusing to let past experience dictate future action, but my body was not so advanced, refusing to go through the motions that had caused it so much trauma before. Each time, instead of rotating backwards, I simply jumped, landing feet first in the now benign water. Though my body was unharmed, I lost more and more confidence in my ability to succeed in whatever I put my mind to.
As the test approached, I almost resigned myself to failure, but I hated being afraid almost more than my body hated getting hurt. I had always thought of myself as a strong person mentally, but here I felt weak, for I had not the willpower to even control my body, the most basic and fundamental control of earthly existence. If I could not conquer my body, I had no hope of conquering anything else in this life. Unconsciously, I connected my grade in the class to this ability of commanding my body. Whether I feared or hated failing, soon it became imperative to my mental confidence that I succeed.
The day of the test, I gave my instructor a shaky smile and signalled to her I was ready to test the reverse dive. Wrinkling my nose, I went through the motions of the dive in my head, picturing myself going through it correctly and painlessly. I fixed my brain on this elusive goal, walling it in with stubbornness, gritted teeth, and pride so it could not escape. Your grade depends on this, I told myself, even if you get hurt it'll be worth it. During my approach, I ignored the screen-door pool that waited for my crashing entrance and jumped, all muscles tensed as if preparing to go into convulsions. I hurled my knees up, flung my shoulders back and pointed my hands towards the water with ferocious determination. I would not be surprised if I let out a feral battle-cry as I dove.
The shock of going into the water correctly was almost as surprising as the pain of hitting it was. I grinned so hard I almost forgot to swim to the side, giddy at overcoming my fear. Now I was ready for world domination. Only later, when I tried to do the dive again for fun and failed, did I realize that I only succeeded because my fear of getting a bad grade was stronger than my fear of being bruised.