Swimming Towards Shadow
The Day I Faced my Fear in a Watery Cave (Part 1 of 2)
It’s taken me a few months to write this post. Part of it is because I needed to process it before I could find the words. Honestly, I still feel frozen. And part is because I had nightmares for a week after it, and I always try to write from the scars, not the wounds, so to speak. It’s a long post (actually a long 2 posts), so bear with me.
This summer, my husband and I went to the Mexican Riviera with some friends. We bougied it up in an all inclusive resort, surrounded by turquoise water and all the fancy dishes this little foodie heart could ever desire. I mean, just look at it…
It was a trip designed to get away from, well, the dizzying and nauseating news cycle and to recover from all the burnout that the past few years have brought.
As such, we planned to rest for most of the trip, but we did want to have at least one day of exploring off-resort, so we decided as a group to head to the ruins and hang out at a local cenote.
For those of you who don’t know, a cenote is a natural sinkhole created from collapsed limestone, eroded by water over time. So what you basically have is nature’s swimming hole, filled with gloriously cool, clear, mineral-infused water. Delightful.
My friends had been to one before, and while I’m not a fan of the idea of a sinkhole, the picture looked enough open-air to be semi-comfortable. And who couldn’t resist that water?
As I said, I don’t like the idea of a sinkhole, and I definitely don’t like caves, having had a bad experience in one as a child. That experience also left me creeped out by bats and terrified of enclosed spaces. I also don’t like swimming in water with fish in it (also from a bad experience). But I decided to work through the fish fear and the unsettling sinkhole thoughts in my head, so that I could have this experience with my friends.
Working through fear is a practiced skill, and I’ve had decades of practice with it, as I’m sure most of us have. There are some scary experiences I choose to avoid because I become too flooded, but mostly, I try to at least dip my toe in the dark water of fear (pun intended) to acclimate before deciding to let my survival instincts cause me to duck and cover.
That’s why I got on the bus. If my anxiety were a character, it would be Piglet. And Piglet can muster up enough courage to face this Heffalump of a sinkhole.
Except when we arrived at the sight, I noticed this cenote wasn’t exactly a sinkhole. I mean, it technically was, but it looked more like a cave. I immediately began pushing away tears, and my friends looked mortified and concerned. It was definitely not the sort of cenote we were expecting.
I stood, frozen in flashbacks from childhood. But there was also resolve mixed in with the fright. Yes, it was a cave, but it seemed spacious inside, not like the cave from childhood. And I’d never waded through cool water in a cave before. Shouldn’t I at least give myself that experience?
I was still answering that question in my head when I realized my legs were already taking me down the slippery steps that led into the frigid water. Before I knew it, I was in the cave. And shortly after that, my entire body went numb, not just from the water (which was freaking freezing, by the way), but from absolute terror. You see, in order to wade through the spacious cave, you had to pass through a gullet of toothlike stalactites and stalagmites. I just couldn’t do it. Luckily, my ever-resourceful husband found a safe passage around the cave monster’s mouth, and we joined up with the group by the one ray of light shining down from the cave’s ceiling.
I made it. I was going to be ok.
Until I wasn’t. Because the tour wasn’t over. We were only halfway there, with the rest of the tour leading us away from the spacious pool and into a corridor of pitch black, waterlogged, underground tunnels. Seeing I was ready to bolt, the tour guide threw me one of those orange and white striped life preservers, so cartoonlike that I felt even more pitiful. All I wanted to do was shrink away, clutching any dignity I had left, and here’s this guy highlighting my cowardice for the group to see. He mistakenly thought I was afraid I would drown, which was kind but absurd given the oversized life jacket I was wearing.
“I’ll guide you through,” he said.
I tried to explain to no avail that it wasn’t the water I was afraid of (I hadn’t even noticed the tiny fish nibbling at my legs). It was the cave itself, ready to swallow me whole. But he didn’t get it. And I realized I had a choice. I could leave, or I could face this next-level fear.
It was an interesting choice, for sure. Younger me would’ve felt she had no choice. She thought being strong meant she had to face the fear. But midlife me, settling into her wisdom, knew it was ok to exit. And she also knew that this was a turning point, to go to battle with an old fear and finally win. Taking a deep breath of sheer resolve, I grabbed the ludicrous lifesaver and swam forward into the esophagus of the monster.
It was narrow. I couldn’t see anything because the tiny pen light the guide was holding wasn’t aimed ahead. It was aimed back at the group so that they could find their way forward. Wide eyed, I stared in vain at the nothing before me, ears tuned to the cheeps of the radar rodents laughing at my weakness. Silently, I had a little conversation with them. This is home for you, little bats. I’m far, far from home right now.
I didn’t know how right I was because when the guide finally shined the light ahead, I saw that I had absolutely no way out but through.
We stopped in the center of the tunnel, my hair snagging on the uneven texture of the roof right over my head. Skeletal imprints of sea creatures covered the walls around me like nightmarish stucco, and while everyone else oohed and ahhed, I could no longer hold back the sobs inside. They were quiet sobs but heaving, and because I was next to the guide lecturing about how we were now under the sea floor, everyone could see them. I was both trapped and exposed, and I had no idea when the nightmare would end.
“Why is she crying?” I heard a man say a little too loudly, his wife whispering that “some people are afraid of enclosed spaces.” My utter embarrassment boiled up into my ears, but even that couldn’t stop the heaving sobs. My body had taken over, and my brain (which is always in charge) had no power in this space. It was like kryptonite to my usual ability to appear put together, and I had no chance of fighting it.
That’s when the floating started. Dissociation. We can leave this cave one way or another, it whispered, follow me.
We all float here.
And float I did, up and out of the life jacket, following the Pennywise voice of my dissociation, away from the horror…
Until I felt the hand. Soft but strong. A voice (a real one, I think) calling me back into my body
I’ve got you, Kim. I’m here.
My friend. It’s my friend. More and more, I grounded back into my earthly body until I could see her. She wasn’t going to let me go (Titanic pun actually not intended).
I looked ahead in the darkness and could make out a glowing green reflection off the tour guide’s flashlight. “We are almost at the exit,” he said. And even though he had said that countless times throughout this horrific journey, this time I knew he was right because the sign actually said EXIT (in English at that). I was nearly out.
Obviously, I made it through the experience, and despite a week of nightmares, I am ok now. Will I ever do it again? Not likely. Am I glad I had the experience? Not really. Did I face the old fear and finally win? I don’t think so. Did I have a spa day the next day? You bet your ass I did.
But this experience, like most experiences, really did happen for a reason. It gave me a visceral metaphor for something nearly all of us go through at some point in our lives. The Dark Night of the Soul.
More on that tomorrow…