Thalassophobia- Fear of Large Water Bodies

By Anita Kainthla

We always disagree on whether or not I died that day on the beach. My  daughter and I. She’s 17, rational, straightforward and communicative. I’m a  paradox on most days. But I have died, she hasn’t yet. And about this at  least, I am as rational, as straightforward and as communicative as her.  

When I was 14 and raped, I permanently lost all rationale. I felt a deep sense  of loss but didn’t know what had died. At best a retrospective consideration  allows me to name it now. I was only 14 then. Nothing made sense. There  was a desire to reason about it with someone. Anyone. But I was such a  sordid mess due to all the physical and mental distress that I didn’t know  what to say and to whom. So the desire died taking with it a huge portion of  trustingness and a whole lot of childhood. 

There have been loves and lovers since then. Some attempts at normalising  life, some efforts at feigning to forget, with an aim of resuscitating the lost  trust but all such endeavours have worked only for a short while. After a  short while the overwhelming emptiness has always returned and restarted  the attack; an auto-immune disease of the mind, that is corroding and  destroying the existence of the mind. It’s impossible to undo such a demise.  

My father died when I turned 28. His cancer infected the memories I had  with him. Like those times when he would comfort me and say, “Don’t cry.  With time everything gets better. It will be alright. Just have faith”. And those  times when we laughed at silly things, watched frivolous movies and  discussed histories, geographies and politics of the world. I have since lost  trust in these memories. They have become fickle and hazy. I can’t tell the  real parts from the imagined ones. They are un-mendable and irretrievable.  His cancer also took away all those moments in which new memories could  have been made. It wasn’t only him that died of cancer. 

When her husband found Mona hanging from the ceiling, I was among the  first few people he called. He was all over the place with his words and his  crying. Apart from his anguish I couldn’t decipher much. So I went  unprepared and faced her death without any protection. Some thought of  mine decided on my behalf to anatomise the situation and prevent the  sudden, unbearable assault of grief. How come I never saw her depression?  We grew up together as neighbours, as classmates, as friends. I could still  understand her inability, her hesitation to share but what happened to my  ability to comprehend the matters of her mind? Was I too self absorbed?  Was I too selfish? If I was a little more attentive could I have saved her?  These and many other such questions have since remained unanswered.  Mona left so abruptly. With her passing I lost so many good parts of my  youth. For a while I clung on to memories of our friendship for consolation.  But memories are mirages. Once they faded there was no protection left. I  have many nightmares every now and then where I see myself hanging  alongside Mona from the ceiling. I have died every other night alongside my  best friend.  

That day on the beach, with my 17 year old daughter I didn’t die for the first  time. I’d died many times in many different ways. But that day it was a death  I’d not experienced before.  

“Its not possible that you could have died mom, the water was too shallow  for you to drown,” she said with irritation.  

We often went to Radhanagar beach during the two years we lived in the  Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The water there was blue, clear and cool. The  depths of the Indian Ocean were filled with corals of beautiful rainbow  colours. Swimmers and divers abounded in the ocean to get a closeup view  of the incredulous corals. I’d only seen it once through the transparent glass 

floor of one of those little touristy boats. Swimming or diving wasn’t for me  as I suffer from Thalassophobia- the fear of large and deep water bodies. “Its not a real illness mama”, my daughter ridiculed me. 

“You have so many mental blocks. Swimming is a natural instinct in human  beings and being scared of water is just a silly mental block”. “Maybe”, I said and I meant it. I did have mental blocks. But it was also  possible that I really did have Thalassophobia too. Who was to say. Who is  to say anything with certainty about so many things in life.  “Come”, she said. My daughter, all of 17, aiming to prove that my fear of  water was simply a mental block. 

She took my hand and dragged me into the water despite all my resistance  and appeals to let me be. Fear rose in surges from the pit of my stomach.  The heart raced, the breath quickened, the sweat broke out, the nausea  arose and the head dizzied; but the mouth went dry and no sound eschewed  from the throat as much as I tried.  

Once we were waist deep, she suddenly let go of my hand, raised her arms  in the air and shouted, “Look mama you are in the water and you are ok.  Now just enjoy it” . Saying this she began swimming away from me. Thats when it happened. A wave, about ten feet high, came hurtling at me. In  the face of its magnitude, everything left me- fear, fight and mental blocks.  When it dislodged me and threw me over, there was a deep surrender. With  feet in the air and back on the gravely ocean floor, the body was being rolled  into the ocean by the receding wave. But I was free. Free of the body, free of  fear, free of death. I had died that day. I had died to death.

By Anita Kainthla