My heart was pounding and I could feel my whole body quivering. Sweat and salt stung my sunburnt face. I hadn’t even seen the spot we were sailing to for the day, but the stories I read online already had me nervous. I heard my name being called up from above my room rocking below the water. I began to creep up the stairs procrastinating the time before I had to start getting prepared. The anxiety I’ve amassed was already killing me, but I knew I had to go. 

It was the 3rd day on my boat trip at the British Virgin Islands and we were going to a snorkeling landscape in the middle of the ocean. From the research I did the night before I already knew I wasn’t going to like it. I scrolled through the photos of people posing with giant sea urchins, frozen barracudas, and hundreds of jellyfish knowing that would be me soon, just not as jubilant. As I finally got up the stairs, I saw everyone scrambling to get their gear on. As I dug through the pile of fins searching for my size, my parents lectured me about how I need to stay close and not touch the reef. The massive compartment of gear made finding my size like searching for a needle in a haystack. We parked the boat and let the anchor drop 30 feet. I finished strapping the goggles to my head as tightly as I could, and my turn to jump into the water had already come. I hesitated to step off the side of the boat because it felt like the only safe place I had and I knew I couldn't turn back after the jump. But then, I felt myself falling and I looked back to see my sister laughing after she pushed me off the side. The second I splashed into the water I felt a hundred tiny zaps. It felt like the slap of a hair tie on my skin after pulling the elastic a few centimeters out. Even though we had to swim 50 yards until we got to see the reef, jellyfish already hovered everywhere in the otherwise empty water. However, they weren’t huge ones with draping tentacles as the people commented online. They looked more like small rocks but hollow and translucent. I swam through the water just following the crowd as my parents told me when I could finally start to see the beginning of the reef.

“This will be the hardest part.” My mom tried yelling at me through her snorkel.

“What?” I had no idea what she meant until I saw my dad leading the group and swimming over a 5-foot long pool of sea urchins barely missing the dagger-like spines sticking out of them.

My heart dropped.

I watched everyone go and suddenly I was up next. I came close to the start. Too close. I went back and let a few more people go so I could build up the courage to swim over the urchins. Suddenly I really missed those jellyfish.

I thought back to the research I’d done the night before. I didn’t see any pictures of this entrance. The only urchins I saw sat at least 7 feet away from the camera and even those made me want to fake an injury to get out of this. A few seconds later, my mom snapped me back into reality. Only we were left. 

“Who do you want to go first”

“Me. N-no you. No wait, I-I’ll go I guess.” I hoped she couldn’t hear me stuttering through my fogged up snorkel mask. I swam up to the bridge. You can do this. If the 170-pound dads can swim over this without being impaled,  I can too. No, I can’t. Yes, I can. 

I couldn’t.

My mom’s anger grew to the point where being in her presence felt worse than being punctured by the urchin’s spines. Every second of her yelling felt like 10 minutes. In the middle of her sentence, I briefly looked away, then swam over the urchins. It took about 5 seconds but felt like an eternity. Suddenly, my goggles were 20-pound weights pulling me to the bed of needles below. I sucked every organ tightly into my body so I could be small, yet I felt as if I filled 90 percent of the space between me and the animals. Then, relief. I swam above a rainbow of coral and thousands of fish. I was proud of myself for overcoming this obstacle, even though nobody else could tell. For the rest of the swim, I saw no barracudas, and nothing else even a little scary. When I got back on the boat, I showered in the ocean and had a good time the rest of the night with my friends and family.

I look back on this moment every time I’m scared about something when I know it has to happen anyway. I try not to research anything as much online because I know now that worrying about something only makes you suffer through it twice. Instead of panicking I remember this time and know that whatever I have to encounter, I will be able to overcome it. I don’t hesitate to jump off the side of the boat, but rather launch myself in head-first with excitement.