Lost at Sea
Lets talk about fears for a second. People can be afraid of literally anything. I remember being young and watching Maury Povich on TV after school. He did a show about overcoming fear and had guests on that were deathly afraid of strange things. Clowns, (I can understand that one), balloons (ok I don’t like when they pop and scare me either) and then a guest that was so afraid of mayonnaise she had to run off set when a big jug of it came out (that one I don’t really get).
When I was a kid my worst fear was aliens and being abducted by them. I swear later in life I would even see a UFO. As an adult however my fears changed after I witnessed a boy nearly drown when I was a teenager at the beach.
Thalassophobia, is a fear of the sea and although I love water and swim in it frequently my (unfounded) fear is being left alone in deep open water. Would this ever happen to me? No but it is also the reason I will never go scuba diving because in my head they will absolutely forget me and leave me by myself in the middle of the ocean.
So Autophobia , the fear of being alone and Bathophobia, the fear of depths or deep things also apply to my fear of the water. In my search for these terms I came across this multi-map graphic from towerpaddleboards.com that shows the worlds largest bodies of water ranked by size.
Just looking at this gives me anxiety. Some of these are what my worst nightmares are made of. Waking up in the middle of the Pacific floating alone in a raft because my plane went down and I’m the only survivor?! It makes my toes curl to imagine being in the middle of the Caspian sea with depths of 3,360 feet below me. I have goosebumps, I hate it.
Don’t invite me on a cruise, don’t invite me on your deep sea fishing excursion and don’t ask me to go parasailing over the Atlantic. I’m available for pool parties and hot tub events on land only.
