How I Overcame My Fear of the Ocean
“Can we pleassse go to the pool?”
Whenever my family took a day trip to the beach, I would ask this question.
Ever since I was little, I was not naturally drawn to the ocean. I always preferred pools, since every time I tried to play in the ocean I would get smothered by a wave from behind and feel trapped in the darkness of the water.
But my real fear of the ocean began when I was around 10 years old after an instance where I felt like I was actually drowning (even though it was probably for 5 seconds). Swimming out a little into the water and falling off what felt like a cliff under my feet… I can’t recall exactly what happened, but I vividly remember the taste of salt in my lungs as I fought for another breath.
I didn’t like that. So I stuck to pools.
Senior year of high school came around, and I began to think about what I’d do with my final summer before college. Get a job at an ice cream shop? Try to hustle a tech internship? Try living in Korea by myself for a while?
I had many ideas floating around in my head. Until one night, I watched the Oscar-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher about a man who scuba-dived every morning to meet an octopus he began to befriend. Not going to lie, I was crying by the end.
It opened up a whole new part of the world to me. Adventure has always been a passion of mine — I’d done 5 backpacking trips through woods, mountains, canyons — but I realized I was totally avoiding the 71% of the Earth’s surface that is the ocean…
There was something so mysterious and unknown about it, and I began to feel a force tugging at my heart to go explore.
I realized I only had one last summer before I was off to engineering school. So I decided to go for it. YOLO!
I signed up for a 3-week Outward Bound course for sea kayaking and sailing in Maine, which ended up being a traumatizing, yet epic experience!
The first half of the trip consisted of sea kayaking every day for ~7 hours from island to island and camping in tents every night.
In sea kayaks, you’re so close to the water, you feel like you’ve become a part of the wave. I had my moments where I caught myself holding my breath out of fear as we did a crossing (kayaking across open water) amidst 3-foot waves.
One person in my group capsized in the middle of a crossing once, and he ended up getting back into his kayak with no problem. After that, I began to trust my boat and my own ability to save myself if I ever fell out (we’d practiced capsizing and self-rescues).
The second half of the trip was sailing, where we worked, ate, and slept on a 30-foot sailboat 24/7.
Unfortunately, we got a ton of wind during sea kayaking and no wind during sailing… So we ended up having to row most of the time. But the one day we did get to sail, we zoomed atop the ocean’s surface. I felt like Moana, free, without fear, as I dragged my fingertips along the water, drawing my own path amongst the waves.
Not going to lie, this trip was the hardest outdoor expedition I’ve ever done. By Day 4, almost everybody had cried at least once. We had to wake up at 5 am every morning, change into our moldy swimsuit, and immerse our entire bodies into the frigid Maine ocean.
We were always busy packing, unpacking, cleaning, moving. Every day felt like a year. And I had never truly experienced what it was like to be cold until I sat shivering and wet on the windy morning of Day 5 where I couldn’t lift my spoon to my lips because I was shaking so violently.
Let’s just say, every moment was a chance to practice stoicism. The weather always seemed to be working against us. The saltwater made it so that nothing was ever dry and I had no skin left on my hands. But I tried to focus on the beautiful islands that surrounded me, the seagulls patting their feet in the water, or the delicious mac n’ cheese we cooked for dinner. Gratitude for where I was and the people I was with, and a dedication to do everything in my control to make things go more smoothly.
On the last night, I sat at the bow of the sailboat by myself on anchor watch (each of us took 45-min shifts throughout the night to stay awake and make sure the anchor isn’t dragging) and watched the most beautiful full moon with its reflection beaming up at me from the ocean surface. I’d witnessed the harsh reality of the ocean on windy, rainy, foggy days, but this was my chance to fully appreciate the stillness and calm as my body rocked back and forth as the sailboat bounced with the waves.
I realized that what I was truly afraid of was not just drowning in the ocean, but the feeling of losing all sense of control. It was a change in mindset that had to occur in order to accept and overcome this fear.
And by the end, I had finally succumbed to the uncontrollable force of nature. And it was a relief. For a lot of the trip, I felt like I was always fighting it. Getting angry when it rained and got my sleeping bag wet. Cursing the wind and currents that pushed directly against us as we fought on the kayak treadmill. But on our last day of sailing, there was torrential downpour, and it didn’t phase us at all.
After experiencing all of it, both the beautiful and the miserable, I learned to lean into the powerlessness I felt on the ocean. To embrace it. And eventually, to love it.
I’m still scared of the ocean. I mean, how could I not be? But this time, I got smothered by a wave, and I smiled.
So, what is something you fear? And what is the fear behind the fear?
