I was inspired by thisismylife's recent blogging challenge on @liketu, 'The 30 Pictures 30 Stories Challenge'.
They were originally inspired by rubencress '30 day not-so ordinary ordinary items challenge' and I find both challenges a great way to encourage daily posting on hive.
This challenge is pretty open-ended; please feel free to follow my formula, or thisismylife's or rubencress' challenge structures listed in their posts linked above 🔼
The only stipulations are that you post one picture a day with a personal story attached to it for 30 days.
Write your story/anecdote to the best of your ability, and use the tag #30stories and/or the #notsoordinary tag if you're following rubencress' challenge. It is also advised to use the #challenge tag.
As I am a professional writer outside of hive blockchain, and as I only dabble as an amateur photographer, I thought I'd follow thisismylife's challenge format to tell some stories and anecdotes about my strange life.
It is no secret that scuba diving is a huge part of my life.
Probably half of the poetry I have ever written is in some way inspired by the sea, and a good few are written directly from my underwater experiences like Just Beneath the Surface.
I think that title explains a lot about my personality.
Throughout my youth, I was around situations that are far from normal.
Among other things, I grew up with an adopted sister who had previously lived with abusers who treated her in such an abhorrent way that it belies belief that any person could treat another in this way. Her abusers were her blood-parents, and the levels of abuse were of such an extreme nature that I don't feel comfortable talking about it further here on hive.
This experience smashed me apart as a teenager, I went through many years roiling with rage deep at my core, an impotent rage that as these people who committed the abuse were untouchable.
If I'm honest it left me psychologically scared until deep into my late twenties.
Psychologists, and therapists, experience something called transference, which can be an essential part of the therapeutic experience.
But even for therapists, when the negative situations their clients went through transfer too deeply on them, to an extent where it causes damage to their mental health, it is a signal that they're not cut out for that particular type of therapy. For example, a great hypnotherapist might not be an effective grief counsellor, or an abuse therapist might not make a good cognitive behavioural therapist.
In my case, I was just a fourteen-year-old lad who wanted nothing more than to hunt down and decimate my adopted sister's abusers. I experienced a level of Traumatic transference that I just wasn't equipped to deal with. It haunted me for years and caused self-destructive tendencies...
This was until I learned to truly look beneath the surface.
Learning to scuba dive had a great part to do with this major catharsis in my life. Before I learned to dive I was seriously depressed, I saw the bad in everything but was unable to perceive the other side of the coin, the good in the world.
Sometimes a physical act (as in my case with scuba diving) can flip your perceptions so far on their head that you see the heart of your darkness; the illusion you've built up as a defence mechanism over decades, which then come crashing down, and in my case, it caused a release and a deep, abiding sense of freedom.
I was actually terrified of swimming out of my depth in the sea before I visited Thailand where I learned to scuba dive. Even wearing a mask and snorkel as soon as the bottom faded to grey, then to unknowable black, I would feel sick and the beginnings of a panic attack would take place.
I can still remember like it was yesterday my first scuba dive in the sea. My heart was beating like it would leap out of my chest, despite having done many hours of pool training before diving into the ocean.
But the moment I saw the light glance from the sway of soft coral, almost translucent fingers like mini-branches that grasped at the current... as soon as I descended to play among those coral cauldrons all fear left my soul.
This is hard to explain in words. As a lifelong atheist, it is as close to a religious experience as I've ever had.
It repeats endlessly every 3-4 years when I manage to save up enough money to take a trip to dive the great beneath. Join the fish, nudibranch, octopus, shark... and especially swim through the miracle of symbiotic life that makes up coral colonies.
The wonder never fades, the fear has been perpetually banished and there is nothing that makes me feel more alive than playing among Coral Cauldrons.
Thanks for reading 🌿
All photos and media design used in this post are my own.
Camera: Samsung S7 Smart Phone.
To see more of my poetry please visit my YouTube channel Mainly Poetry.
