Irrational Fear

I don’t mind water when it is low enough that I can touch the bottom of whatever is holding the water. Unfortunately, being such a short person, there are many collections of water that I cannot reach the bottom of. I’ve never been a good swimmer, but I would like to believe that I would be able to swim like a pro if my life depended on it. It’s not really the swimming or not swimming that I am scared of -- even though I am also afraid of drowning, that isn’t exactly irrational for a poor swimmer. I’m just not a huge fan of the vastness of water. Even an innocent public swimming pool has it’s frights. I fear the deep, dark waters will pull me under and reveal the viciousness underneath (like the lack of air for my lungs). Though I’m not afraid of heights, I am afraid of deep waters, as though they were great heights but with water in between. I once had a dream that I was flying through the sky and I looked down to see a lake. The lake was crystal clear, revealing a couple of giant whale-like monsters at the bottom. I’m not saying that swimming pools deeper than five feet contain mysterious aquatic animals, but lakes and oceans could be homes to just as creepy creatures. I am mainly just afraid of things that are big and kind of empty, like outer space. It scares me to think that there is so much emptiness, and it also scares me to think that there could be, and are, living things that can survive in that emptiness. Even a typical sea-dweller like a whale is frightening in its own way. Those bad boys are huge. Whales are definitely fine by me when they are far away or in photographs. I just cannot imagine being confronted by a massive whale that may or may not mistake be for krill, without me having a heart attack first. Of course, I probably wouldn’t be close enough to an ocean for that to happen. I’ve only been to an ocean once in my life, and I did not go swimming in it. Maybe I am more afraid of water animals than the actual water itself. When I was younger, I was camping with my family. I was in the shallow parts of a lake with my brother and sister, and I stepped on something sharp. I reached down and picked it up. At first, I thought it was a toy lobster that somebody had accidentally dropped into the lake, then, a split second later, I realized it was a dead crawfish so I screamed and threw it simultaneously. Obviously I got out of the water at that point, and stayed out. I do not think I have gone swimming in a lake since that incident, but it’s more because lakes are kind of gross. Despite their beauty, I dislike large bodies of water quite a bit.