Dare to fail!

Ok, stay calm. Relax. Go with it. Breathe, for goodness sake. I can do this. Go. Don’t think about, just take a deep breath and gó.

I. Can. Do. This.

Recognize this speech? It’s the peptalkspeech I say to myself all the time. Do you have a peptalk for yourself too?

Life is full of chances, risks and challenges. And to achieve all those things, you have to try to be the winning team. Always go for more, peptalk yourself, go for the gold. Never quit. Believe in yourself.

I believe in myself.

But yesterday*, I failed. And I was so mad at myself, so pissed and incredibly disappointed. Really, am I quitting?! Yes, I was.

My name is Sabrina and I quit diving.

My hubs and I are in Egypt as I’m writing this.

We’ve been here a couple of times before, so we’ve seen some things. Snorkeling in the Blue Hole (that’s like swimming in Finding Nemo), riding camels, meeting Bedouines, a jeepsafari in the desert.

Me, on a camel in the desert in 2008. Ain't I charming. 

Visiting Caïro (the pyramids) is high on our list, but it involves a night in a bus on the bumpy roads of Egypt, a lot of money, and the 8 hour bumpy ride back to Sharm El Sheikh. I probaby won’t sleep the two busnights, so we haven’t done that yet.

But what else could we do?

Hubs knew immediately. “Let’s do an introduction dive!” Uhmmm, really? Me? I’m the cocktail at the pool girl. Diving is not on my bucket list.

The excursion was a boattrip to Ras Mohammed, a beautiful piece of nature in the Red Sea. And it involved three stops where we could snorkel. For a few Egyptian pounds more, you could do an introduction dive during one of the stops. And so I said to my hubs:

“Ok. Let’s do it. If I get scared, I’ll just climb back on board. But I think I won’t.”

Except… I did. I totally freaked out and the diving instructor Alladin had to swim me back to the boat. (Want to read the whole diving disaster? Read it here)

Back there, everybody was asking me how it was.

I told them how exciting it was, but that I got scared. But at least I tried it and it was worth trying. I even smiled telling thay.

I just didn’t buy my own story.

I failed.

I failed big time.

I wasn’t even 5 metres under water.

I couldn’t enjoy one second of it.

Everyone was telling stories about the beautiful fish they’d seen during the snorkeling. I hadn’t seen one fish. Ok, I saw a couple of fish, but I did not really look at them. I was scared to death and I felt like a big loser.

I lost this one. Period.

People told me they watched us dive, that it was going pretty fast. Some were inspired to try it too. That’s cool. But the only thing I thought was:

Don’t do it. It’s awful.

A little boy shouted out he had been waving at me the whole time while he was snorkeling. Why didn’t I wave back?

Sorry fella. I was too busy freaking out.

My hubs came back so excited, good-excited, about all the things he had seen. He sat on the bottom. He had pics of him diving. He saw incredible things in the water. I’m happy for him. We bought a dvd with the adventure, and it was funny to see him dive. But then there’s the painful and only shot where I’m in. My fourth time trying to dive. You see me freak out and tell Alladin to go up. Go up! Now! You can see me making big hand gestures and shaking my head. I wasn’t even a metre under water when I got crazy.

So there it is. I was pissed and mad and sad and very disappointed in myself.

When we went to bed that night, I turned to my hubs.

“I’m kinda sad I couldn’t do it”, I said. He gave me a big hug and a kiss.

“I thought it was very brave. I didn’t think you’d go so far and do it. I thought you might even quit when you were in the suit with the tanks and everything.”

“I know, I didn’t expect to actually jump in and go.”

“And when you realised you didn’t like the diving, you tried it again. So you were very brave.”

The next day I was a bit hung over from all the angry feelings towards myself. I opened my Cosmopolitan and the first article I read, was titled: Dare to fail.

“If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain” was a quote in it. Make mistakes, lose with pride and never let your head down.

So after reading that, I relaxed.

And took a zip of my cocktail.

There, safe at the pool in Egypt.

I’m Sabrina and I quit diving.

And that’s OK.

* I wrote this during the Christmasbreak.