Since arriving in South America I’ve taken on (within reason) pretty much a ‘don’t say no’ or ‘try everything you can’ attitude. This means that I have inevitably ended up spending far more than I anticipated, however the pro’s of this this far outweigh the financial cost.
One of the biggest expenses I didn’t expect is for diving. This is by far my new favourite thing I’ve discovered here; I love it. Being out in the open water both on a boat and in the sea are so much fun and every time I do it I return with a massive grin on my face feeling great.
Wednesday was no exception; on Tuesday I finished my Open Water and became a qualified diver (Woohoo!!). However I’m not stopping there and I’ve decided I want to go diving in the Galapagos (not cheap) so need the advanced qualification.
There was a small swell that afternoon and I found myself actually laughing aloud sitting right on the bows of the boat as it rose and fell in the sea sending the surf rolling over us as we made our way to the dive site. I’m not a person that suffers from seasickness easily.
I’ll post more about diving another time but the advanced qualification requires a few extra dives one of which is a deep dive to 30m. Due to the pressure of the water when diving a person is required to equalise their airspaces regularly while descending to avoid causing injury and at 30m you use up air at 4 times the normal rate so time is really at a premium.
Unfortunately on that particular dive I wasn’t able to equalise and so in order to allow the others to complete the dive I got sent back up to the surface by the Dive Master. As I lay floating in the water waiting for the others to resurface with almost a full tank of air I was so pissed off with myself and actually quite upset.
I knew I still had a night dive to do next but the bastard evil voice in my head had finally reared its ugly head and returned with a surprising amount of venom. To some people on the outside I think depression can seem to be quite selfish, but in reality this is so very far from the truth. It’s self-absorbing maybe, but never selfish.
A good example of this is what my mind started doing when I returned to the boat. I don’t think anyone was aware of what was exactly going on in my head at this point but they could see I was immensely disappointed. Natty my instructor told me that it sometimes happens and I shouldn’t worry, I would get another opportunity to repeat the dive.
The bastard voice however didn’t really want to register this. In my head I had gone from being super excited and over the moon to falling completely though the floor. It was taking more self-control than I’d care to admit to keep myself in check and at this point I wanted to be anywhere other than stuck in a small boat with a group of people I barely knew who were all having a really good time and trying to tell me not to worry.
Similar things have happened to me in the past but in previous years I’ve only really become aware of the fact after the event. The speed of how quickly I went from high to low quite frankly shocked and worried me extremely, but the fact I was recognising things as they happened and that I was more self aware in the end turned out to be a very good and immensely positive thing.
Anyway at this point the voice was telling me that here I was having found an activity I genuinely loved doing and not only was I now unable to do it, ever, I had also let everyone else down and there was no point even trying the night dive as I would likely ruin it for the others and feel even worse when I inevitably failed.
All of this was of course complete rubbish and writing it down like that makes it seems as if i have a mental age of about 4! However, when the voice takes hold and just won’t let go the depressive mind, or at least my depressive mind, applies a very weird and twisted logic to things. In those moments I think about other people but convince myself that they probably don’t want me around and that they would be better off if I just left or just sat there not participating or talking so they don’t have to worry or feel they have to talk to me. Totally loco!!
Eight months ago I probably would have given in and gone about feeling shit stuck in my own warped reality not listening to a damn thing anyone was trying to say to me. This attitude has in the past unsurprisingly ended offending people. When I do try to say things in this frame of mind I may say them with the best intentions, but I don’t actually think them through logically before speaking so what comes out of my mouth can seem somewhat offensive and even deeply uncaring, though this is also in fact so very far from the truth.
Without the counselling I had at the beginning of the year and the use of the self help websites the details of which I have now posted on the mental health page of this blog I don’t think I would have been able to do what I did next.
It sounds so simple, but just saying ‘no’ (or slightly less politely ‘fuck off!’) to the voice can have an immensely positive effect. Being so very afraid of failing the night dive as well was not a good feeling as I got back into the water, but I was determined that I would at least give it a go and because I am now very much more self aware and more importantly feel in control I was able to use some of what I’ve learnt to just get on and try and enjoy things.
The night dive in the end went off without a hitch and was amazing. Only 30 minutes or so might have passed since the deep dive, but I had no problems equalising this time round and when we all turned off our torches on the seabed I could feel myself grinning like a child as we waved our hands quickly through the water watching the plankton glow in front of us and through our fingers.
As we returned to shore I was once again whooping happily at the front of the boat very happy with things. I am slightly concerned that I went from high to low to high again so quickly, but this has been my first real test of how I would deal with a potentially serious depressive moment.
On Saturday I went back out to have another crack at the deep dive and it couldn’t have gone better. I’m really pleased that I managed to deal with the whole thing rationally and didn’t let it beat me.