THOSE THINGS LURKING UNDER THE SURFACE..

I don’t know if this is just my problem or if other people develop fears as they get older. Perhaps it has nothing to do with getting older. Well, here it is. I have almost drowned twice in my life. Once while swimming in a canal in Milan, Illinois when I was about 12 and once in a small pond in Bonner Springs, Kansas while swimming across with someone else. I have swam in the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea and the Mississippi River. I spent nine months in the navy aboard a light cruiser and as a civilian on a freighter from Naples, Italy to Norfolk. I’ve flown back and forth over the Atlantic Ocean 5 times. I have loved every experience. I wouldn’t trade any moment for anything. But here is the thing. I have Really developed a fear of being in water. No, not a tub or a shower or even a pool but a lake or sea and certainly an ocean. It has been a slowly developing fear. For some time now, I have felt that I would die in water somewhere. I don’t know when or why it began. I had a hard time watching the movie “ Cast away” during the time he was in the water. But the movie I couldn’t stay with was “Open water”. My fear is not knowing what is below me in a vast ocean or sea. What is near me or beside me or just be waiting to be pulled below or worse, bitten or eaten or all the above. If I can’t stand on the bottom or see the bottom then I won’t ever be there ever again ever. I had a dream once while in Italy. I was dreaming that I was drowning in a murky but light green water and I was sinking farther and farther down and I suddenly woke up gasping for air and sweating. It was so real it took me a few minutes to realize it wasn’t real. Very vivid. It actually keeps me from taking a cruise or flying overseas again even if I were thinking about it. A lot of things change as you grow older, I am sure. I am not afraid of dying, only of how I go about doing it.