Deep Dive

It had been quite a dive up until that moment, and I was starting to feel like all of the previous training and practice had not really prepared me for what I was facing; the dread that maybe I was out of my depth and about to drown kept staring me in the face with rows of pearly white, snickering teeth. I had been managing my air, inhaling deeply, slowly, making each exhale as prolonged as possible. I kept bringing my focus to the sometimes hissy, sometimes echoic sound of my breath, going inside myself, searching for calm; but my racing heart kept booming between my ears, pounding as if to escape my chest, and the burning sensation that flowed up and down my throat like an acid yoyo would not allow rest. I knew I would not be able to keep it up much longer: I was suffocating. The spotlight that had started off almost like a beacon of hope kept moving around, getting dimmer, and the different colors of the environment around me were mixing with one another. Blue, green, yellow, and purple were no longer distinguishable; they blended into a bubbly mass of dirty gray before my eyes. I felt dizzy, totally disoriented, and for a second I could not tell which way was up. Floors turned into walls, transformed into fractured glints that broke all perspective, denied or exploded three-dimensional space, disappeared, and reappeared all at once.

Groping for something to grab a hold of I tried to remember my mentor’s words of encouragement, the very last thing he said before giving me the final push into the Tank; but for the life of me, rummaging around my brain, looking for that specific memory, all I found was fog and inarticulate, meaningless gibberish. Effort upon effort I tried to recall his face, his calm eyes looking into mine, telling me that it would be alright, that I could do this, that I truly had what it took… but all I saw was a stormy seascape filled with amorphous monsters, my fears coming up to the surface in the shape of three-eyed, quintuple mouthed beasts that spit green goo in my face, cephalopod deformities that tried to wrap their tentacles around me, and gigantic selachimorpha ready to chomp me to pieces and swallow me down without any regard to my despair or suffering.

It had always been a dream of mine to go into shark-infested waters; well, maybe not infested, but at least where small groups of them were known to swim. I thought it would make me feel heroic, triumphant. I guess that’s what happens when you grow up with a father that does nothing but judge you twenty-four-seven. I spent most of my childhood trying to live up to his expectations, to be an ideal son, but no matter what I did he always disapproved of my inventions. He always thought that I was too out there, too unconventional; he never understood my interest in science, and even less so my love for the sea. As the son of an auto-mechanic from Jefferson City, being one himself, he thought it was my destiny to continue the family legacy and work at the shop. He was convinced that the inventions I came up with were trash, that they would never interest anyone, and would one day leave me destitute and alone. Still, my ability to daydream kept my head in the clouds, and there, in the realm of make-believe, I was unbeatable! Proving my father wrong about me and my creations was a huge part of my finally deciding to dive into the Tank.

My dreams were now proving to be nothing but dangerous fantasy. I had rehearsed this moment in my mind over and over again and had convinced myself that I would nail it. I had gone through the motions days in advance; everything about the act, how I would present myself and swim in their waters, if you will, had been planned out. All these preparations had given me the courage to jump in with my gear, glide around the Sharks’ every move, avoiding their attempts to bite me, and finally come out unscathed and successful at the other side. That would have been a story worth telling. Me, a simple guy from the city, a nobody with nothing to his name, working hard and making it where so many others had drowned; my dad would have been proud…

But reality was slapping me around like a soldier under Patton’s command. When I realized I was in too deep I started wishing I was back home in Missouri, working at the shop, under the hood of a car, simply tightening nuts, changing oil, or greasing up pistons instead of dealing with the sharks in the Tank; answering the call of the wild, the desire for adventure, money and fame might not have been the right choice for me.

My legs were trembling and about to buckle, and I could see myself falling headfirst against the floor, still holding on to the breathing apparatus I put all of my engineering prowess into. All the cameras were on me now; I could feel sweat sliding down my but crack as time seemed to slow down to a stop. My teeth were chattering, and I swear I felt a couple of pee drops coloring my pants. Maybe this was the real reality of reality T.V.: an idiot human being, with a bunch of emotions churning in their gut, wrecking their nerves, turning them into a cartoon for the whole world to laugh at, throwing themselves at the mercy of merciless human beings, all for the sake of entertainment.

-So what about the patent for your tank-less dive gear, do you have it? - Kevin O’Leary, the Great White Mr. Wonderful asked, and that’s when I knew that I would not survive the Tank.