02
“That’s what it feels like.” I say. Though paralyzed by fear, my fingers are twitching as if I’m typing an invisible keyboard, and my heart is beats faster than the wings of a hummingbird. Sweat drips down the sides of my face, and shivers chill my body.
“Damn,” the lady sitting across from me says. “That’s some scary shit. I never had a trip like that before.” She is a heroin addict. Everyone here is addicted to something, except for me. I’m the exception. I wish I had an addiction, but I don’t. I have an aversion, to water. I’m what they call aquaphobic. It seems there’s no support groups for people with phobias, so I come here. I’ve been coming for a few weeks now, but today was the first time I spoke about my condition.
“Thank you for sharing, Ishmael.” The group leader acknowledges. A friendly and proper response, but I know he doesn’t really understand. The clinicians call it an anxiety disorder, which I suppose is true. For me though, it’s more than just a diagnosis, it’s my life.
The support circle around me is filled with bewildered faces. There are five of us in the room, the same five here every week. The group leader, Chad, is a well-groomed, fashionable, and fit type of man. He’ll say he’s here to help us but I know he’s only here to boost his social work resume. That’s fine, though. Liz, the heroin lady is sitting across from me. Amanda, whose husband killed a family last year drunk driving is sitting beside Liz. Paul, who recently got told he was dying of lung cancer, I guess smoking really does kill, is sitting next to Chad. And then there’s me, I’m the weirdo who while everybody else has water by their seats has a Cola because he’s afraid.
A silence descends over the room and the addicts in the room glance at each other with guilty faces. Liz reaches for her bottle to take a drink but instinctively pulls her hand back when our eyes lock. Aquaphobia affects about 1% of the population and usually manifests in mild forms, such as the inability to swim or travel by boat. In my case it’s beyond that, it’s debilitating. I can’t shower. I use cups of water and bars of soap to clean my body, it’s all I can handle and even that is accompanied by occasional bouts of fear. When I’m low on fluid intake I use Aquapills, which are literally just little capsules of water. I take three in the morning and three at night; taking a pill is psychologically easier than sipping from a cup so it’s worth the extra cost to me. I can’t be near fish tanks. I don’t go to any open bodies of water. Ever. If I cook, I can’t boil anything, too much water. Whenever it rains, I’m trapped wherever I happen to be. One time it rained in the afternoon and I was stuck in a mall. Well, it rained all day and eventually the mall closed. The rain had flooded the streets and the security guard told me I had to leave, so I fainted. I woke up an hour later in the hospital. It makes relationships difficult, scaring most girls off by the second or third date. For these reasons, and the growing severity of my condition I’ve been attending these sessions, and they’ve mostly been useful.
“How did it start?” Paul asks.
“Only share if you’d like to, Ishmael.” Chad offers.
“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” I say, responding to both comments.
I knew that I had opened a line of questioning once I shared my purpose for being in the group. I didn’t mind sharing, if that’s what it took to get better. By exposing myself I was laying the foundation to improve, starting the path of recovery.
“When I was younger, I always admired Nemo.”
“Oooh! I love Nemo!” Liz quipped.
“No, not Nemo the Clownfish. Nemo the Captain, from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
The smile on Liz’ face faded.
“Captain Nemo in all his brilliance. I’d always wanted to be just like him, self-exiled under the sea, living elusively. He was so intelligent, a man way ahead of his time, and he couldn’t share his accomplishments with anyone except Aronnax, Land, and Conseil! Nemo had a supreme influence over me as a kid, he controlled my inner psyche. I’d play mystery around my parents, and rage around my friends. They didn’t get it, no one really understood how transfixed I was. I’d read the book every night. I’ve probably read that book over 50 times. Anyways, I became so wrapped up in it that I made a pact with myself. Something of a covenant if you will. I would become Captain Nemo! I was going to build a submarine, call it the Nautilus II and live under the sea. I didn’t live by the ocean so Lake Erie would have to do. It wasn’t 20,000 leagues either, but it was close enough. I told my parents it was for the school Science Fair, which was partly true - I did compete in the Science Fair with the Nautilus II, but that’s not why she was built. I spent a lot of time and even more of my parent’s money to get the pieces right. I’d spend full days at the landfill searching for the exact right pieces to fit where I needed them. I learned how to weld in shop class and would spend after school hours welding countless pieces of scrap metal together to construct my wonder. She had to be huge too, if she was going to last forever. My parents were pretty good about it; they let me keep it in the backyard and helped me find pieces quite often. I guess they were just happy I was so engaged in what seemed like regular school activities. I caught my dad bragging to some of the other parents at a PTA night once. I think they were proud of how hard I worked on it. When the Nautilus II was fully built, she looked amazing! I had painted the outside in yellow like that Beatles song, and my dad inscribed “Nautilus II” on the side for me. It had an entrance latch, a small window, mattress, inflatables underneath so it’d float if I needed it to, and ample storage space. When the Science Fair came around, I won a gold medal. None of the other dinky Science projects stood any competition to my creation. The other kids were jealous and wanted to see inside, but the Nautilus II was my prized possession, nobody was going inside except for me and maybe Jules Verne if he rose from the dead. For months, I spent all my money on grocery trips for non-perishable food items to stock the Nautilus II. I filled up the whole inside with canned foods, cereal, granola bars, and other packaged goods. By the time I was done, I had probably bought the whole store!”
Everyone was staring at me. Their eyes penetrated me and they were listening intently.
“Anyways, I built up my courage to go into the sea and left in the dead of the night to take the Nautilus II on her one and only voyage. My dad had a trailer hitch on his truck for when we’d go boating, so I was able to attach to the Nautilus II to that. I drove out to the lake in complete focus of my mission. I backed up my dad’s Ford truck onto the beach and the Nautilus II got her first taste of sea. I unlatched the hitch, ditched the truck in a nearby alley, and proceeded to push her out into the Lake’s murky waters, before jumping on top. As I sat on top of the Nautilus II, the tide slowly pushed me out. It was so cold! Hours passed to where I felt I was far enough offshore to make my descent. I repeated a mantra, All you need is heart, for a brand-new start, opened the top’s entrance door, jumped inside, took one final look up at the stars, and punctured holes in the inflatable mattresses suspending the Nautilus II and thus, my journey began.”
The group around me was dumbfounded. Liz’ face was so pale she could’ve been mistaken for a ghost. The group knew where the story was heading. I continued anyways.
“Well, it was pretty naïve of me as a 16-year old kid to legitimately think I could live at the bottom of Lake Erie the rest of my life. Sometimes when you love something so much, you lose rationality. The seals on the Nautilus II weren’t completely shut and water began seeping through the holes. First there were just a couple, then as the Nautilus II sank deeper and the pressure built, more holes formed. I knew I was in deep, deep trouble. I wondered how often shipwrecks occurred on Lake Erie. I found out later that there had been over 130 wrecks on Erie but I held a new title: the first submersible to ever capsize in the lake. The water continued to rise around me and the food packages floated everywhere. I knew I had to get out. I fought with the entrance latch, but the sinking made it so heavy to open! I couldn’t get it. The Nautilus II felt more like a tomb than a marvellous feat of science. The water was up to my neck when the Nautilus II hit the lake’s bottom. About a minute later and I’d have been done for. But by some miraculous stroke of luck, or perhaps divine intervention, the door finally swung open. Water cascaded down on to me from the opening as hundreds of packages of ichiban noodles and granola bars shot out of the top. I knew the danger wasn’t over though; I still had to reach the surface. I used all my force to shoot off the floor of the Nautilus II and propel to the surface. If you don’t know how deep Lake Erie is, I do – it’s 64m. That might not sound like a lot, but a person can drown in a cup of water. The pressure was pounding! I felt like my head was going to explode. I shot up as fast as I could, hopelessly opening my mouth to collect air but gulping down big pockets of cold, murky water instead. For a freshwater lake, it sure doesn’t taste very fresh. Eventually the pressure subsided and I knew I was getting closer to the surface. I could see a dim light above penetrating the water like a laser. I swam closer to that light, and it grew bigger, illuminating the greenish water around me. The light seemed like a calling, an otherworldly force beckoning me to shoot out of the water like a torpedo. After what seemed like a lifetime of upwards swimming I finally hit the surface and felt a blanket of warmth and light from the Sun cover my face. All sorts of emotions rushed through me, but the most prominent was fear and relief.”
Open-mouthed, wide-eyed faces glared at me, piercing my soul, like I was some sort of witch. No one knew what to say. That was nothing I wasn’t used to.
“Oh my God.” Paul remarked with a twinge of embarrassment.
I continued. “I had made it through the worst part but the ordeal was far from over. I spent about 8 hours treading water, waiting to be rescued. In the morning, an older couple noticed me bobbing up and down with the waves and sped over to me. They took great care and were generous in their help. When they asked me what happened, I lied and said I swam out too far and the surf caught me. It didn’t matter though because my story was all over the news for weeks. I was honoured with the prestigious Darwin Award, a joke awarded given to feats of stupidity. The humiliation in the aftermath was worse than the incident itself. Some days I wish I did die onboard the Nautilus II.”
The group was looking me at as if I was a puppy who’d just peed on the carpet; their sorry faces gazing down upon me.
“So that’s why,” Liz confirmed.
“Yes. That’s why I’m so afraid of water. It’s gotten worse over time. The more I think about it, the more scared I become, it’s a catch-22. It’s a curse more than a disorder.” I admit.
“You’ve taken a great step today Ishmael,” Chad offers. It’s the same tired response he recycles for everyone. What does he know? No one can relate to my story. Sure, people can draw parallels but my story is unique and has never been lived by another person. I chose not to acknowledge Chad’s inadvertently pretentious words of encouragement.