Fear.

The silence underwater deafens me as it floods my ears, my nose.

Air.

The screaming of my lungs joins the many voices screaming in my head. Every scream shouting something different.

You need air. Right now.

Pull the deck.

Don’t. Pull. The deck.

Panic.

There is blackness. Never have I felt so alone. Can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t hear. 

Can’t. Breathe…

We roll to a stop at the put-in. We look out the window to find that the playful, fluffy waves of the silty river we had paddled some days before, had become fast-moving, messy, and much, much larger. The silty colour had changed to a dark brown, and white froth was being spat out from huge holes* in places they had not been before. As though it were an ugly potion within a cauldron, brewed to a rolling boil.

This is not a good idea, I think to myself.

My muscles move without my consent, in a half-hearted decision that I instantly regret, I do not fight,  my fingers grasp the loop on the skirt, and I heave my deck free from the boat.

I am instantly torn from my vessel. 

I come up to the roiling surface, spluttering frantically.

Massive, brown, and frothy waves crash all around me, and I cough and gasp between giant gulps of water as it forces its way into my mouth.

I turn my head, eyes wide, searching for my boat, searching for help.

A hole, or hydraulic, is when water flows over an obstacle in the river, such as a rock. That water’s direction is now changed to move downward, creating a “hole” in the current. Water rushes in to fill this hole, creating a washing machine effect. Holes can range from playful and inconsequential, to potentially fatal.

I catch a glimpse of my yellow boat, nose up, sinking into the depths of a raging hydraulic**.

“Here!” yells my partner, and he is suddenly beside me.

I reach for the back of his boat, and I feel shame mingled with my water-logged, ragged gasps.

Brad lets out a low whistle, and our driver shakes his head.

“Well, she’s a little higher today.”

No shit.

We walk down to the river’s edge. I am not impressed by what I see.

I frown, “I don’t want to do this.”

The last time we had paddled this run, it was comfortable, and non-threatening. It was a wide, large volume river. Though not the kind of paddling I am generally used to, it had big, playful waves, and virtually no consequences. The water was warm, and the lines were easy to pick. In other words, it was a perfect river for someone trying to regain their confidence whilst paddling whitewater in virtually a glorified plastic barrel.

It had been months since I had last paddled until those few days ago. The last time I did paddle, I took an embarrassing and unnecessary swim, all because of my lack of confidence. So you can see where this is going.

After our previous run here, it had been followed by several days of torrential Ecuadorian downpours. And so, naturally, as the rain fell, the rivers rose. Thus, transforming this peaceful, easy-going section into a froth-spitting, angry, brown, extremely fast, and extremely confused body of water.

“Look, I personally don’t think I am reliable as safety today, and so that makes 2 out of only 3 of us, as being useful.” (Although I didn’t exactly have any confidence in one of our other paddlers either), I say, when asked why I’m so nervous.

“The river is fast, which can be managed, but it’s also wide. IF anyone swims here, they WILL lose their gear, there is no question.” I continue irritably.

Eventually, after much debate, and a few phone calls to people who know the run well, the group decision is made, that we will paddle, with the option of an earlier take-out.

I know that I worry too much, and have a toxic habit of keeping no confidence in my own skills, even after proving the opposite. The feeling of dread in my stomach does not dissipate, but I quietly agree with my fellow paddlers anyways.

“Hold on! DO NOT let go!!” Kyle yells over the roar of the water.

I am clutching the back of his boat so hard, my knuckles are white, and I kick my feet furiously, trying to help him.

 An eddy is when the current flows AROUND an obstacle in the river, such as a rock, or a point onshore. The space in the current is then filled with water flowing in the opposite direction of the main flow. This can range from calm, gentle water, to forceful opposing current. In this instance, the water was calm.

I am coughing and spewing water, choking back sobs.

It feels like eternity before we finally swing into an eddy* on shore.

I manage to stand up, and am surprised to find that in my right hand, I am still clutching my paddle. When I let go of it to place it on the rocks, my hand cramps as I unfurl my shaking fingers.

My boat is nowhere in sight.

“IF anyone swims here, they WILL lose their gear, there is no question.”

Anger, and embarrassment fill my chest, and hot tears push the beads of water out of their way as they begin to stream down my face, plopping into the brown water I am still standing in, joining the vengeful current in a traitorous fashion. I want to blame the others. I want to scream and tell them I was right. I am too ashamed to do so though, because the one that had proven my own words, was none other than me.

I strain to look upriver, at the large, white maw of the hole that had been the means to my end. There were two of them in a row. The first had flipped me, but hadn’t held me for very long. However, when I tried my roll, my head came up too quickly in my terror-stricken need for air, and so my unsuccessful attempt dropped me back under.

Although I had not come all the way up, I had caught a glimpse of the second hole in front of me, and knew what I was heading for. That was the moment my panic had bested me, and it had caused me to make a very wrong choice.

I spent several moments suspended in time, in a place of white, in the maw. You cannot breathe, you cannot see. You can only feel the weight as tonnes of water crush and batter you from all sides.

Finally I had been flushed out, and ended up where I was now, sobbing pitifully down stream, unable to quell my emotions, and boatless, in the middle of the jungle.

With only one option left I begin my hike through the jungle to meet my friends at the take-out.

I realize I can’t even place a finger on what all of my anger and tears are really about. Fear was in there for sure, but perhaps only at first.

Why was I so afraid?

Looking back now, the fear that has controlled me, over and over again, is the fear of failure.

I seem to have “missed the boat” in learning how to deal with failure, which then results in me crying in front of boys when I mess up.

I mean, knowing me, you’d think I would be used to it..

But in reality, I never knew how to fail. And knowing that failure is alright, is so important. Honestly, why isn’t there a class in school about this stuff? Pythagorean theory my ass.

All jokes aside, my anger, my shame, my embarrassment. Those did not stem solely from swimming on something I shouldn’t have swam in, let alone even been paddling on. They stemmed from me, not knowing how to fail. Because you see, if you punish yourself, no one else can do it for you.

These thoughts run free through my still angry mind. The tears are finally drying on my face to become itchy, as my bare legs brush through the thick, amazonian undergrowth.

“And this one is from some rare scorpion. It stung me, and my leg went purple and I had to go to the hospital. Its stinger had gone right to my bone and everything…”

My mind wanders, as I duck under a moss-covered vine, away from failure to the words of a well-known, fiery woman, well-respected in the Ecuadorian kayaking community, as she showed a group of us her multiple scars from her various encounters with terrifying jungle critters.

As if I didn’t have enough to freak out about.

I begin to use my paddle like a scythe in attempt to reveal any sort of death monster that may be hiding.

“And THIS one was a monkey bite. He pulled the nerve right out of my thumb, so I actually can’t feel this thumb anymore”...

I now start scanning the trees too for death monkeys.

What was worse? Getting battered upside-down in a massive hole and drowning violently, or this hike through death monkey territory?

I begin to walk through the jungle like a city girl when put into literally any kind of nature.

Because why not keep the embarrassment train rolling right?

I decide that the jungle is no longer a place for reflection.

In the days that follow, the results of my swallowing of Ecuadorian river water become shockingly apparent, as though to serve as a brutally uncomfortable reminder of the shame I still carried. While everything had resolved itself, I had still gotten my ass handed to me, in more ways than one, and it stung... Also in more ways than one.

Yet through all of the the consequences that had resulted from my blunder, one thing became more and more clear; I needed to deal with my confidence, and my weird failure complex.

As someone who has always “kept up with the boys”, for lack of a better phrase, it seems that a seed of unnecessary pressure began to take root.

Now, you’ve got something to prove. And should you let it, that seed will feed off of you, and flourish. Your power in being underestimated excites you, until the day you prove everyone right, instead of wrong. And that hurts you, and continues to do so, until you become afraid of that hurt, that frustration.

Realizing that carrying that weight is not a way to go through life, you acknowledge that moving forward is going to take a lot of hard work, and that you need to choose the right people to surround you with. As we all know, the only way to get better at something, is by doing it over, and over again. Often times, this also means failing in front of others. I have been failing at things my whole life (this is supposed to be meant as less morose than it sounds), but until one is comfortable with that failure, it is impossible to fail well, and learn as much as possible, from that mistake.

  Known on the “Fun Scale” from 1 to 3;

1 being mildly fun to do, fun to remember;

2 being hard to do, fun to remember, and;

3 being hard to do, not fun to remember

The point is, swimming doesn’t make you less of a badass, and if you’re a gal that keeps a testosterone-filled crew most of the time, and you pick the right ones, they will keep encouraging you to go again. It has taken me an entire season of river tears, bad swims, two lost boats, a couple of broken friendships, some nervous-poops, some river-sick poops, and a whole lot of bad choices made at the wrong times for me to finally come to this conclusion. So I sure hope you feel a little better about yourself, because learning is supposed to be fun even if it’s Type 2 or 3 fun*, and truly learning is a treasure.

By: Mikeala Shaw