Selachophobia

A lot of things have happened in the past few days, but none that I can really talk about, so instead I'm going to talk about the innocuous of my unreasonable fear of water.

For as long as I can remember, I've had nightmares about sharks in swimming pools. I learnt to swim at Tooting Leisure centre which had 2 types of different coloured tiles making up the pool floor. The shallow end was light blue and the deep end was dark blue. I was always fine in the light blue bit, but going in to the dark blue bit would absolutely terrify me. There was a ladder on the border and I would cling to it, refusing to move. All the instructors thought it was cause I was worried I wouldn't be able to swim all the way to the end so they'd stand there telling me I could do it and that it wasn't that far etc and I always felt too silly to tell them why I wouldn't do it. As the tiles were dark blue, the water looked really dark and deep and there was this grating at the bottom of the pool through which I always imagined a shark bursting.

It doesn't improve with different swimming pools either, as long as there's a grating etc, I'm scared of going near it.
http://www.mississippireview.com/2001/eldridge-sharks.html
The woman in this story probably sounds completely rediculous to you, but I understand exactly where she's coming from. I'm getting a lot better than I was though, I can sort of swim in swimming pools, as long as I keep an eye on what's going on around me. Things like doing front crawl still scare me though, cause you have to close your eyes. Oddly enough, as soon as I put on a pair of goggles and look under the water, I'm fine. I love swimming under water, and can quite imagine myself going scuba diving or something, although only if I was swimming along on the sea bed, I couldn't just swim around in the middle of the ocean. I think it's basically a fear of not knowing what's beneath me. Watching tv shows where they're splashing around on the surface of the sea scares me too.

People often don't seem to get that it's a real phobia. I was out with a boy the other day who was telling me about his fear of double decker buses falling over and how he can't go on the top deck of one, so I told him about my fear. He said "well that's easy to sort out, I'll take you swimming some time and we'll cure you, but my fear could actually happen so I can't get over it". I have been swimming many times; I know that, in reality, you could never get sharks in a swimming pool, but that doesn't help. I get even worse in the sea, or in any form of murky water. Some friends of mine didn't take my fear seriously a few years ago when we were on holiday in Spain. They wanted me to swim out to this platform a little way out in the sea; when I refused, they pursuaded me to lie on a bodyboard and they would tow me out. I started panicking almost as soon as we'd left the shore; I tried to scramble higher up the bodyboard to get myself completely out of the water; I screamed when I saw a plastic bag floating by beneath us, assuming it was a stingray! When they got me to the platform all I could do was sit in the middle of it shaking whilst they went on the slides etc. They very nearly didn't get me back in the water to go back to the beach.

I went kayaking a couple of months ago and at the end of the session my boat sank. At first, I refused to get out of the boat and tried to bale it out with my hands. Then, when it finally sank below me and I had no choice, I tried to haul myself up on to the front of the instructors boat, nearly sinking him as well. We were about 3 metres away from the shore and he told me to get off and swim to the jetty and I refused. Eventually he had to paddle to the shore (with me still clinging like a limpet to his boat) where my friends hauled me out of the water.

I would love to be able to swim or do water sports etc. Stuff like sailing, where I'm on top of the water, I love but as soon as it involves me being in the water, I panic. I tried waterskiing at this lake once but as soon as we started to pull away from the jetty I would let go each time because when you fell off you had to swim back to the jetty from there and I knew that I would never be able to swim back from the other side of the lake. Swimming the 10 metres from where I let go to the jetty was bad enough. Windsurfing was just as bad. When I fell off, I couldn't stay in the water and pull the sail up from there, I had to scramble back on to the board. I never really got anywhere with it cause I was too worried about falling off to actually windsurf. I think this picture accurately sums up my fears:
http://www.snopes.com/photos/surfer.asp