The water was warm and clear not murky with seaweed or fish just clear for miles around, deep and silent. My arms floated where they were and as they became motionless. I allowed the water to slowly crash in around my face causing a small tidal wave, instantly causing a rush inside my ears. It was like the sound of a sea shell you put to your ear as a child, again, in my short life, I heard this sound. My eyes were open and I sank with determined clarity, arms above my head, hands met pointedly, my left foot firmly by my right knee, both feet with toes-pointed, as a warrior would. I sank my first mild seconds this way, as I resigned myself to my end

My back tended to lead the way down. Suspended between the dark water I was floating towards and the sun lit, powder blue water I was losing, I saw bubbles going towards the silky, clear crust of the water. I would continue to descend until I was unaware and closed my eyes not deliberately, but peacefully, laid one hand and pruned fingertips between my breasts and let my other arm drift away on its own. I was asleep without sleeping, breathing without air, numb and sinking into a cave of mystery, bewildered, scared and drifting unconsciously towards death, all alone.

I was in the summer of my fifteenth year and in the seventh consecutive summer of going to the salty white shores of Gibraltar, Spain with my family. I got on the boat to see lobster and crabs and jumped out to swim poorly down to the depths. I hardly knew the family and friends I was with and skinny, gangly and shy to the point of disappearing even to me at times. I sat on the rim of the boat and got in at the last minute. I smiled at the few who noticed and did not tell anyone in my family I was to go get us a lobster for dinner.

I had just learned that my father was a cruel, unlikable, but handsome man living off the money his father had generously given him. My grandfather was a successful writer. I was kissed by a boy for the first time and happy at my new school. This summer I was learning how to knit with my sister nights on the porch talking about dancing and lipstick and trying to be grown girls with sand snarled inside our hair which we would have never noticed.

I was never impetuous and learned to be practical when my parents separated and I forgot needed things at the alternate parent’s house and had to bear the punishment of going without something like a toothbrush or fingernail polish of which my sister would giggle and I would redden with anger. Today I broke with rules and jumped on the boat and worried when they continued out to the open sea. Everyone dived-off the sides of the boat with ease and I followed immediately disappearing into the molecules with eyes wide open looking for lobsters, never seeing them or knowing why we’d go out so far to see animals that are usually not far off the coast. I came up for air several times and continued the boring swim to seem like I was having fun, even though there were no lobsters to be found. I took a long deep dive and challenged my ears-popping to go just one or two seconds longer before beginning the long slow float upwards. When I reappeared I found the boat had been gone long enough for the water to show no motion and that I was left behind too far out to swim back. I would not have known which direction to go in, immediately, I panicked and cried.

I had floated into the darkest abyss and faced the end of a short stay on Earth feeling every emotion I had while treading water wondering how my parents would react to the news, feeling frustrated, sad and resigned. But here I was, once again, back on sand coughing-up the murky water which had over stayed itself in my lungs. I was glad to expel the imminence of death from my being but found it embarrassing when the mucus water came out of my nose later that night when I turned my head on the pillow. I had survived the drowning and was back in the warmth of my bed breathing light air in a repetitious motion and that felt good. I found it was easy to put the experience behind me, by telling others and myself that I did not remember what happened, or how long I was waiting or drowning. Rather, I set it up in my mind as an unlucky intrusion to my warm swim, after that summer, and for other reasons, we never returned to Gibraltar again.