I had hoped that this post would be focused on the amazing weekend that our team had at the National Marine Sports Festival in Tongyeong, followed by a very nice respite on Geoje Island (the most beautiful place I have ever been), but alas - life had other plans, an experience which puts that albeit-wonderful experience in the backseat for storytelling-prominence.
Sunday, August 9th. We arrived in Busan from the weekend trip with spirits high. The athletes, Coaches, and some of the parents convened in a restaurant perfect for nurturing such spirits, for the food is absolutely divine. After eating and celebrating, the kids departed with their families, and I left with my Korean family to get ready for my Sunday open water swim.
Before swimming, a few of us went for a coffee by Gwangali Beach to sit and relax. The wind was abnormally strong, which was reinforced by the fact that the lifeguards at Gwangali came on the loudspeaker on two separate occasions to call people out of the water (personally, I don't think that complete evacuation was necessary, but when dealing with big waves and varying degrees of swimmers I suppose it's better to be safe than sorry). Luckily for me, my open water swim (OWS) was destined for Igidae Park, where the cautionary notices are merely visual, hence more open to interpretation.
On our way to Igidae, Coach reinforced the safety-first principle, and said that we have to take a look at the waves before deciding if swimming is safe. Although the waves were pretty big, I had swum in somewhat comparable waves the weekend before, and we agreed that my swimming ability could battle anything that the ocean had to offer me that day (take note of the singular.)
Today, instead of swimming back and forth in a selected inlet-area of choice, we decided that it would be more interesting to swim from point A to point B. So I started out at point A, the coast's first inlet, where many people were sitting and enjoying the waves in the shallow water, and swam perpendicularly for about 50 meters to get out of the way of the peripheral rocks. That 50 meters was much more difficult than the main leg (parallel to shore) as I caught a few developed crests smack on, but nothing a little salt-water-digestion can't fix.
After about 15 minutes, I completed the first horizontal-leg of my journey, and noticed Coach calling me into shore. This particular inlet was more crowded with rocks than point A, and although I have swum in that area before, the waves were so large that I had to pay close attention to where I was swimming and where the waves were taking me. The short perpendicular distance from ocean to shore was significantly more challenging that the opposite, because of the force of the waves was not directing me towards shore. In any case, it was no problem, and although Coach decided to cut my party short, I still had fun for the 18 or so minutes that I was out there, learning new tactics for open water swimming and enjoying the extra ride of the waves.
I exited the water and after dealing with a reprimand from an onlooker and many...looks...we headed back towards point A. As we got closer to the inlet, we saw some kids playing in the water (normal). However, after what seemed to be a few seconds, that 'few' that I saw (or envisioned that I saw) quickly became 'one', and the action no longer seemed to be 'playing.' Coach saw it too and while I started saying something like 'I think he needs help', Coach didn't seem to be listening, and we both started running down the cliff as quickly as we could (keeping safety in mind, of course).
Normal progressions must happen at an exponential speed when there are big waves, because it seemed that it was quite a short time between he and his friends playing in the water and his body to cease moving independently. As I climbed down to the shore, he was still moving, although his head was going under more frequently and while above water, remaining there for fewer seconds. The situation was becoming visibly more and more dire by the second, as I could tell from Coach's voice as I was climbing down, so I threw my jacket and all of its contents (goggles, cap, etc), to better utilize my hands. But as I threw off my shoes and attached the board to my ankle and prepared to dive in goggle-less, Coach was yelling at me, "Catie! You need your goggles! Where are your goggles?" Stupidly, I had chucked them down the cliff, not knowing exactly where, and, having known that, knew that although my attempt would be much more effective with goggles, I also knew that since we had now hit the point where the boy has stopped moving, every second was precious, and searching for the goggles would take away 10 or 15 possible moments towards saving him.
However, I listened to Coach, and got my goggles, and dove into a patch of white water. My experience freaking out in triathlon OWS (open water swims) for 5 years suddenly came in handy, because I was in a similar experience now - my heart thrashing, breathing labored -but had come to know this feeling well and knew I could conquer it. I sighted the body, and got there within what seemed to be a few strokes. I can't quite remember my emotional status and I instinctively placed his head under my arm (if I were asked to show at this moment what I did I might not remember exactly - I guess my past lifeguarding experience left a good impression), for now the board was useless since he no longer had independent movement of his limbs.
Although I wasn't making a plan in my head as I ran down, I can tell you that, if presented with the situation on paper (which obviously is not relevent here) I would never have advised someone to take a victim to slippery, sharp rocks as a substitute for land in order to try and save his life. But, unfortunately my ADHD mind was paralyzed from the moment I detected distress and was transformed into a completely one-track thought process: a fellow human-being is in trouble and I can help him - I must get there as soon as possible. Subconsciously, I knew that I had the skill to help this boy, and that my confidence (in my OWS) combined with a situation that was not overly dangerous in my assessment (made with what I believe to be a rational mind), left me with no conflicting emotions about whether or not to act. However, it removed my ability to think critically about the situation (which I'm sure is something that psychologists say happens to most people, and I'm not disputing it), and while I believe that my subconscious, pre-contact with the body, would have directed me towards shore, post-contact was a whole different situation.
His head is in my arms. A rock is within a few meters. At this point, with the waves seeming to come more frequently since the moment of contact, the shore seemed like a blur. We are surrounded by white water, and while I feel I am in control (or rather not out of control), I am infused with the belief that I can hoist him up onto the nearby rock (which could only at best be a brief intermediate safety zone), from which I would have to quickly transfer him (with an assumed helping hand) to a higher, more stable, less slippery rock, for this rock's budding surface was totally at the mercy of each crashing wave. But all of this 'reasoning' was interrupted by a crash, and a subsequent pulling force, which sucked the boy from under my arms. A bit frustrated but not much phased, I shook it off, and went after him again. Again he went under my arm, and with my 'reasoning' still resonating with possible success, I repeated the attempt. However, the next wave was not so forgiving, and not only tore him from my grasp, but also threw me tumbling into an extremely precarious situation.
Strangely, though, precariousness is not at all reflective of how I felt. I mean, for certain, I now felt the first feeling of being unsafe, but my thought process remained one-tracked and clear, and calm, and strategic. 'Shiiiiit. Ok you are no longer vertical. There are many rocks around you. Any second now you might feel a blow to your head, or leg, or arm, and if it is your head, you might only have a second to react, if any at all. Should I relax my body?' That last thought entered my head because I am under the impression that if your muscles are less tense, at least during a car crash, you are less apt to sustain more serious injury - I believe there is a statistic where people who are drunk (e.g. drunk drivers) often don't get as injured as their sober counterparts, sadly enough. Maybe I'm wrong, but in any case, as that thought started to develop, I felt a breeze on my face, and heard my Coach yelling at me to forget about the boy and get out of the water.
I have to admit, at this point, I had stopped thinking about the boy, for as I opened my eyes, I saw a new obstacle: the waves decided to introduce me to a nearby cove by relocating me from one side of the rock to the other. As a nice surprise, this cove was omnipresent with white water, collecting only the best of the best of the waves' fury. After a few more seconds (a second being an amount of time that can harbor thoughts and feelings that could normally occur over hours) of uncertainty and dedication to getting a grip on the rock where my Coach's hand was extended, I thought, as you might, that climbing up out of water would be no problem - but the waves had a bit more experience to throw my way, and once again lured me back into the cove for one last bout of uncertainty. The feeling was so strange, because I wasn't afraid, but I wasn't confident that I would get back onto land. I was relatively calm, and confident that I would fight my best to get out of there. And that I did.
After the final pull of the ocean, I put my hand back on the mossy, shelly rock, grabbed Coach's hand, and pushed on my hand that was placed on the rock as to use as little pulling-in-the-direction-of-the-water motion as possible (my feet were useless as the waves made underwater-grippage extremely difficult). I got my torso out of the water and onto the rock, and quickly pushed the rest of my body onto the rock. And there, once my mind registered my body's safety, the thrashing of the waves transfered to my body, as I started convulsing in tears.
It's interesting to think about how your mind will function if you are ever in a situation like this one. Like I told my parents this morning as I told them the story, a few years ago, if the same situation happened and my actions were the same, I would probably have gone into the water hoping to be seen as brave - aka with selfish motives. But my train of thought and the way by body reacted to it amazes me - here I'm not talking about the going in trying to help him part, but the composure which my mind maintained in the face of possible...I don't want to say death, but maybe, 'rock-smackage', and how my thoughts immediately went from solely the boy's safety, none of my own, to solely that of my own, and then upon realizing my safety, a complete physical and emotional uncontrollable response to mourn the loss of a potential life saved.
I'm exhausted having come this far writing, although this post has not yet been accompanied by tears (perhaps because I'm not writing freely but trying to write somewhat well, which stalls my normal flood of emotions). But the rest of the story is less (although not devoid of) one of sorrow and pain than it is of friendship and love, so rest assured that lighter moods await in Part II.
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