SCUBA. Growing up, I was terrified of the water. I'm talking a wildly irrational fear that anytime my feet went into the water, something was gonna eat me. Just dived into the pool? Better make it to the ladder before the sharks they release exclusively when I get in the water rip my leg off. Swimming in a landlocked, freshwater lake? A great white is after me.
On a family vacation, all of my siblings resolved to do a 'discover diving' experience. The only reason I signed up was because my brother gave a rousing 'face your fears speech' that was far more convincing on dry land than when I had a steel tank strapped on my back about to hop into the ocean. Anyhow, I nearly had a goddamn heart attack when the dive master thought it would be funny to play the Jaws tune right after I hopped into pitch blue open water where I couldn't see the ocean floor.
I stuck it out, and I'm glad I did because it was nothing short of life changing. I swam barely out of the fetal position for the first fifteen minutes, until all the beauty and freedom of the situation made me forget my fear. Sea turtles. I saw goddamn sea turtles on my first dive at a breathtaking reef. Rainbow colored fish darting in and out of rocks and reefs against a haunting light blue backdrop. Groupers swam around me, and I felt a feeling of awe and wonder like I never felt since childhood. Imagine the feeling of a ten year old seeing yellowstone for the first time.
I was so taken, I hardly noticed when a big gray shape pulled up alongside me, not more than 20 or 30 feet away. It was a big ol' shark. A reef shark that might have been around 6 or 7 feet long. I lost my shit for all of 2 seconds before I realized it wasn't eating me. In fact, it kind of reminded me of a dog, lazily waddling along. After a minute or two, it reached the drop off, and plunged out of sight. Now, I am no longer scared of the ocean. I dive whenever I can specifically so I can get up close to more sharks. Seeing them in the wild, its both thrilling and peaceful: they move so effortlessly and gracefully through the water that you fall back in awe, but that child in side of you screaming, "Shark! Run!" mixes in a boost of adrenaline. It's surreal, and if more people did it, Im sure more people would appreciate and care about protecting the ocean and it's alien, awe inspiring habitants.
TL;DR: SCUBA diving is fucking hectic.