Hidden Depth

It didn't take me long to realize what story I wanted to tell after reading the description of this challenge. As soon as I reached the sentence: "Something you felt in your chest," I experienced a sudden, unsettling sensation in my body that transported me back in time. Not only was my mind filled with vivid images of that day, but I also felt a familiar, suffocating tightness in my chest. It was as if I was underwater again, panicking and releasing the last bubbles of air from my lungs, which floated to the surface as I feared I wouldn't make it back. For a moment, I felt ashamed to share that experience, worried it might make me seem emotionally unstable or unprofessional. However, a gentle shift toward self-compassion that occurred within me that day allowed me to speak openly about it.


It happened during my Dive Master training in Thailand. That early morning, I was sitting in a dive shop, sipping my Matcha Latte and thinking about my final mandatory test: the Equipment Exchange. When you first hear about that test, it doesn’t sound complicated, but when you realize that you have to exchange your whole diving equipment with your buddy underwater, breathing from only one regulator, it becomes quite stressful. I had never done it before, but the calm and professional approach of the divers I’d seen in a demonstration video the day before soothed me a little. I slept well, had breakfast, and was confident I’d pass. But having more than 70 dives didn’t prepare me for how quickly things would unravel.

After arriving at the dive site, we were briefed by our mentor, had our equipment inspected, and agreed on how we would share air and the sequence in which we would exchange equipment. Before jumping into the water, we were well briefed and prepared, but that didn’t seem to matter underwater. Just 7 meters down, we found a suitable sandy bottom, and here we spent the next 40 minutes full of frustration. First, we tried to get used to sharing one regulator. I would take a breath and pass the regulator to my partner, while she inhaled, I would slowly let out bubbles, then she would return the regulator to me, and we would do it again.

We started swapping equipment, which disrupted our rhythm and left one of us gasping, forcing us to start over. As we progressed, we discovered more challenges that confused us, undermined our self-confidence, and made us look like failures in front of the other divers. We floated up due to exaggerated breathing or poor weight distribution, we got tangled in hoses, or we couldn't open the straps. Communication underwater is mostly limited to hand signals, but we only needed to look into each other's eyes to communicate our frustration and gradually creeping panic. The problems piled up, and with each failed attempt, our despair grew.

We returned to the boat tired and frustrated. Our dejection was written all over our faces. After the whole dive of unsuccessful attempts, we just wanted to rest before the next one.

This time, we jumped at another dive site and couldn’t find a perfect sandy patch to protect the environment. There were beautiful corals around us, plenty of fish, and the whole ambiance invited us to explore the underwater world, but we had to go through the test. Once again.

Since I had more weight, I had trouble controlling my buoyancy and had to kick all the time. I was exhausted and started losing focus. I was hitting corals and cut myself several times. Coral cuts go deep. The pain and frustration contributed to the panic and the feeling of unease. My breathing grew shallow, and the regulator seemed to deliver less air. My buddy was struggling too. We tried to support each other, but the difficulty overwhelmed us.

Inside, I was screaming. Angry at my mentor for choosing this site. Angry that we were damaging the reef just to complete a test. Everything that could go wrong went wrong, but I couldn’t prevent it from happening, and I felt helpless. Defeated.

At some point, I had no air left to exhale. I panicked and inhaled water. My regulator wasn’t where it should have been. When I found it and coughed through the mouthpiece, my lungs burned. My cuts throbbed. I wanted out.

For the first time, I gave up. And it hit me very hard. How could only one skill destroy everything I worked towards all those months? Usually calm and professional, I suddenly was stressed as never before, my competence shattered. Underwater, I was none of those things.

Once I calmed a bit, I surfaced and swam to the boat. Plenty of weight pieces that I had in the pockets of my BCD made it hard for me to get up from the water on the ladder. And once I stepped on it with my left foot, something clicked. The pain in the fracture site pulled me back to the previous year, to the day before training was supposed to begin for me, when I fractured that same leg. I had to postpone it for one year. And now, a year later, at the very end, I was limping again, but this time emotionally.

I felt raw. Vulnerable. And strangely, alive. Wrapped in a towel at the back of the boat, watching the pinnacles fade in the distance, I cried. And I couldn’t stop. Everything I’d pushed down - disappointment, shame, the pressure to be strong - surged up. This wasn’t just about the test. Something deeper inside of me had cracked open.

The failure stirred something I was denying - a familiar feeling of not being enough, of needing help but not knowing how to ask. I’d always prided myself on being optimistic, calm, and composed. But none of those things truly helped me in life.

I realized I was always too hard on myself and too soft with others. I respected people, but denied myself the same kindness. I didn’t want to admit I needed support, wanted to be seen, or be understood. That moment of panic, of total collapse, shattered the armor I’ve built over the years.

And it freed me.

As the fresh breeze of the Andaman Sea dried the salty tears on my cheeks, I understood something: strength is what emerges when you allow yourself to fall. I felt it - deep in my chest, in my bones, on my skin. The water hadn’t just overwhelmed me - it had washed something away.

Link to the video: https://youtu.be/-bTK-8YU0ek