Blissed Out to Sea”

Amanda Burrill — Blissed Out to Sea

So as a child, it was as though I was always searching for something, whether it was scouring the woods for quartz, which was the currency of my youth, or rowing this boat from shore to shore on the lake looking for artifacts. Every summer, I wanted to find a bigger artifact. Or in first grade, every day I’d get home from school and I’d go run two miles. And I had like the first edition of the Timex watch and I’d time myself. And that went on for like six years.

And what it looked like to everyone else was this kid who was never satisfied, and what it felt like to me was Nintendo. This was the late 80s, and it was like every day was just a chance to level up. I suppose it was this seeking what’s next behavior that led me to take a Navy ROTC scholarship to college.

Figuring, you know, the military might unlock some adventure. And my plan was to be a jet pilot. And I got to train for it here and there throughout school. In my senior year, I failed my final flight physical. My eyesight had changed.

So I couldn’t be a jet pilot, and I ended up on a ship.

It wasn’t as big as an aircraft carrier, but it was a huge 600-foot ship. But I found a way to maybe make it interesting. I saw these rescue swimmers doing their thing, and I asked my command if I could go. Now, at the time, rescue swimming was not a job for women, and to this day, it is not a job for officers. But I asked if I could go, and they said no.

So, I asked five more times. And I even wrote a memo. And finally, they didn’t say, you know, go get them, girl. It was this begrudged…

Don’t make us look stupid.

So, 56 of us started rescue swimmer school shortly thereafter, and five weeks later, five grueling weeks, I’m not gonna sell myself short, weeks later, eight of us graduated.

So, I was one of these Navy rescue swimmers. And a lot of times, I’d spoken to a lot of rescue swimmers who hadn’t even done like a rescue yet. But my first one came in short order. A guy was drowning and I swam up to him and I gave him the spiel. There’s actually a spiel. You say, I’m a rescue swimmer. I am here to help you. And so I said it. And I saw his eyes like get big and wide, and I saw his panic increase twofold, and I knew what was happening.

This guy is fighting for his life. He thinks he’s gonna die, and who’s there to help him but some skinny woman? And in his panic, he starts flailing, and you know, people who are drowning try to climb on top of things, and he’s pushing me underwater, and the good news is I’m trained for this. So I’m able to break myself free and get ahold of him and say, look, this is protocol. I am allowed to knock you out if I have to, to drag you to safety.

We can do this the easy way and you can just relax. And he hears me through all of this madness and he relents, he relaxes, and I’m able to get my arm around him and drag him to safety. And later that day, I was thinking, I’m a rescue swimmer. I was trained to rescue people. I rescued a guy, he’s alive because of me.

But it was more like, okay, I did the thing, what’s next?

And maybe nothing was gonna be next because rescue swimmers spend most of their time just doing drills.

And one time, about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, we had an admiral embarked with his staff and they were there for our yearly evaluation to quite literally make sure we are running a tight ship And the stakes were really high and everyone’s belt buckles are a little more shiny and brassy. It’s a perfect opportunity to showcase this rare entity my command has stationed on board, me, the woman rescue swimmer. And so we’re gonna do this man overboard drill and make it a real spectacle. And so…

We start the drill, and I run out onto the fo’c’sle of the ship. That’s the very front of the ship. And the way it is is there are these decks that look down on the fo’c’sle, and it’s basically a stage performance, and I know this.

And I run out onto the fo’c’sle when the drill starts, and I’m wearing this shorty wetsuit, and you know, it’s not even like zipped up all the way.

Ponytail swinging in the wind, and I get up to the very front, the bow, and they help me into this harness, which has a couple fancy knives and a strobe light attached, and the whole thing is just really Lara Croft.

And the next step is for me to get hooked up to two lines. One lowers me down to the surface of the water 70 feet below, and the other line keeps me tethered to the ship. And the purpose of it is just in case the worst thing happens while I do a rescue. Let’s say I drown. They have a way to haul my body back to the ship. So I get hooked up to these two lines, and I get lowered down to the surface of the water.

And at the bottom, I’m able to clip out of the chain that lowered me.

But I find that this line that’s supposed to have all this slack in it is tight. And so I think really fast, because I remember, don’t make us look stupid. I grab the knife. and I look up to my boss, and I don’t ask, I tell him, I’m cutting the line, and I cut it.

And I’ve just saved the day, because otherwise I’m like stuck next to the ship. And so the ship keeps going, and I do, everything is normal. At this point, I’ve done this drill many times before, and I pretend to rescue somebody, because remember, it’s a drill, there’s nobody in the water with me. And what the ship does is it goes, and it makes this wide turn, and it just comes back and picks me up. Well, typically it would be me with whoever I’m rescuing, but this is a drill, so they’re gonna turn and come back and get me, except for the ship doesn’t turn. It just keeps going and going, and it disappears over the horizon.

And being on a ship is my job, so I know that horizon is three miles away, and I’ve been in the water hundreds of times in my life, dozens of times doing this very drill, but I have never been out of eyeshot of either land or a boat or a helicopter or another human being, and I am just 100% alone.

I thought, what just happened? It could be a mistake. It could be a conspiracy. They could have forgot about me. Or maybe, like, am I imagining this? Did I go crazy?

And I looked around and the sky was so incredibly blue, but the water was black. I know from outer space, the ocean looks like it’s blue, but it is black.

And there are these thousands of fathoms between me and the bottom of the Marianas Trench, but I can hardly see down to my own fins, like going, treading below me. And every molecule that touches me is suddenly a shark.

And I think like, Jumping to the conclusion of sharks is pretty normal, but I go straight biblical, and I start thinking about the enormity of whales, and how Pinocchio ends up just chilling inside of a whale’s belly, and how Kramer in Seinfeld, he hit the golf ball and ends up in the whale’s blowhole.

And then my thoughts go real dark. I’m little. I could probably fit in a whale’s blowhole.

How long could I survive in there before it blows me out? And how long could I survive here in this water? And how long before my body would decompose?

The rescue swimmer needs a rescue. Where is the ship? What can I do? So I tread a 360 and I scan the entire horizon and there is nothing and it forces me to be present.

The ocean is inconceivably vast. And what I saw, it wasn’t little white crashing waves. It was these football field sized rolling waves. And the water was comfortable. The sun actually warms that top layer.

And the sound around me, it was like this amniotic hum. It was like I, was safe in the world’s womb.

And this feeling rose in my chest. It was like some divine cord was just pulling me through time and space, and this calm that washed over me left me wanting for nothing.

The vastness of the ocean of nature had taken the pressure off. There was no more go, go, go, because there was nowhere to go. And it allowed me to let go. It unlocked this feeling that I didn’t know I had been looking for. Peace.

And there’s no leveling up from that. So I floated there. in my own personal float tank, enjoying my bliss, my newfound freedom, when I see something in the horizon. Oh, it’s the ship.

I’d forgotten about the ship.

I don’t know how long it took for it to pick me up because time wasn’t a thing yet.

But when the ship got to me, it didn’t haul me up the front at the fo’c’sle like it usually would.

And I get it, I had just been left in the water, there was a very good chance I was gonna make a public display of dissatisfaction.

So they kind of like, rude, bounce me down the side of the ship and pull me in a hatch, and I’m sitting there soaking wet on this steel deck, and nobody is making eye contact with me.

I’m like, what the hell just happened? And it had been a mistake. The guy who was supposed to make the turn clammed up, but my commanding officer could pretend there was no mistake at all because, one, I had cut the line, and two, I had said, you know, I’m okay. And I thought I had been out there for like four to six hours. It had actually been closer to one.

Just one, yeah.

Everyone was really apologetic about this incident, but I couldn’t be mad.

I had just been given this incredible gift. What I learned that day out there in what we like to call the drink was that thing that I’d been looking for, not even knowing I was looking for it since I was a little girl, peace.

It wasn’t something I had to go out and find. It was right here inside me, and it was something I could call upon Anytime. Thank you.