After we discovered the wonder of the underwater world on our first snorkeling trip, we were hooked. Although I personally hate the word “snorkel” and maintain it on my cringe-list with other words like “potluck” and “casserole,” I was willing to continue saying it in exchange for experiencing great snorkeling destinations. The Bahamas was an easy pick: easy to get to, not too expensive, and sounds super exotic and elite (we stayed in a sketchy hotel and rented a local guy’s personal Jeep, so don’t ask for pics).

Although we usually preferred do-it-yourself snorkeling spots, we found a tour that sounded intriguing enough to book: The Peterson Cay National Park, a 1.5-acre island just a kayak’s ride away from Grand Bahama Island. The tour sounded perfect to us, which included a kayak (our preferred method of travel) and a snorkeling trip all around the tiny island.

We definitely felt a bit better-than-thou-tourist because we knew how to operate a kayak and a snorkel, and we had fun snickering at the people who went way off course in their kayak or couldn’t put a snorkel mask on without getting burning saltwater in their eyes. In hindsight, it was better to be one of those people that day than me.

We arrived on the beach of the darling little island and waited impatiently for everyone else to figure out how to use their snorkeling gear. Amateurs, we sighed. We made sure to stand closest to the water to indicate that we were ready to go well before anyone else—you know, being the experts we were at all things goggles and mouth-breathing tubes.

The tour guide looked at the environment around us. He looked up at the sky. “I don’t like the way those clouds look,” he said, mostly to himself, but loud enough for several of us to hear. He wanted us to get out their quickly and get back quickly.

With a few guidelines to follow—the most important being to never touch the coral reefs because it causes serious damage to them—we were ready to venture out to the sea. With our guide at the front to lead the way circling the island, things got off to a challenging start.

The tide was quite far out that morning, so we barely scraped over the tops of the corals. It was impossible to swim without hitting them with my feet, so I opted for just floating and gently using my arms to guide me with the group. There was no way I was going to damage any coral, even though it was more taxing to swim without kicking.

But something else quickly became a bigger problem. Those clouds that the guide saw were a sign of strong winds. The wind was kicking up the water. It wasn’t hardly noticeable on a kayak or standing on the shore, but when your life depends on a small tube sticking out of your mouth to keep you breathing, it quickly becomes apparent. Small splashes of water were entering my snorkel tube—probably hardly a spoonful, but that’s enough to prevent easy breathing.

“No big deal,” I thought to myself. “I’ll just blow it out with a sharp breath.” I remembered back to my snorkel lessons from our very first snorkel trip. “If you get water in you tube, don’t panic and flail around and think you’re going to drown,” I remembered our guide saying. “Just a quick breath will get you swimming again.”

“Thank goodness I know about that,” I thought. I blew the water out like a champ. I reminded myself that I wasn’t going to drown because I knew a quick way to remove water from the snorkel.

But the wind’s breath was stronger than mine.

Every few seconds, another spoonful of water would slosh into my tube. I kept focused on the task: blow the water out. The problem was, the water was entering the tube faster than I could catch a breath in between. Instead of being able to breathe in and out, I could only breathe out—and I was doing it with force, thinking each blow would be the last one I’d need to take. I was not taking in any air. I was pure exhalation.

That’s when I started to think that, indeed, I could actually drown.

Breathing is so innate to existence that I bet you haven’t even noticed you have been breathing this whole time you are reading this. We talk about our first breath and our last breath as a more poetic way to describe birth and death. It’s often the first indicator we look for in an emergency—is the person breathing?

We don’t notice we have our breath until we lose it.

Even before we learn anything about biology or science in school, we know we have to breathe. Your older sibling smothers you with a pillow during play. It quickly stops being fun and becomes a fight for life. I still remember the first time I had the wind knocked out of me as a child when I fell off a footstool I was standing on and it hit me in the diaphragm. When I couldn’t breathe, nothing else mattered to me other than solving that instant problem.

Back in my snorkel, I realized with a slight feeling of doom that I had a big problem on my hands. Actually, in my lungs. The water was entering my tube faster than I could take a breath. Worse yet, I was exercising, too, swimming against the current. If my breath had a gas tank gauge, it would look like the tank had a major leak in it with the rate that it was losing its content.

I understood that I needed help from someone, and I needed help now.

I saw my tour group about 100 feet ahead. They were going on without me, and none of them were facing my direction. No one noticed I was missing, their heads tucked into the water to see the wonders below them.

If you’ve never come close to drowning before, or never been trained in recognizing what drowning people look like, I’ll fill you in on a piece of advice now: drowning people do not scream. They do not have the breath in their lungs to cry out for help. It is a silent death. That’s how people go missing for hours before anyone realizes they have drowned, sometimes right underneath them.

I came to face my reality. If no one turns around to look at me, right now, I slowly said to myself, I will drown.

And then I thought: this is how I die.

In the Bahamas. On vacation. Having fun. Making memories with my husband. Not even 30 years old. This isn’t real. I can’t allow myself to accept this. If I accept this, I will die. Next to this 1.5-acre island.

If no one turns around to look at me right now, I will die.

In a breathless moment, there’s no time to contemplate life. There’s no flashback, no reflection if life was lived well, of all the things you still want to do. In a breathless moment, it’s just planning. Planning to get a gasp of air any way possible.

My next thought: I’m sorry, coral. Sorry, God. I gotta stand up on this fragile coral if I have any chance of staying alive.

Standing on coral is clearly a desperate measure. It crumbles at the slightest touch. It’s not exactly a stable surface. And with a strong current pushing against me, standing on some pointed coral, with breathless lungs and breathless muscles, was irrational. But in desperate times, even the irrational becomes a rational plan.

 If no one turns around to look at me right now, I will die. Even more urgent.

I wondered, where is my husband? Is Douglas with the group ahead? Or is he, somehow, for some reason, in my little patch of the sea? Douglas was my new plan. He would help me—if he’s within grasp.

If Douglas is with the group, I will drown.

This was my most certain, undeniable thought. This is when reality actually hit. There was nothing left to plan. There was nothing left to think. Find Douglas, or that’s it, I somehow calmly told myself.

If he’s not here…I will die.

It was my last breathless thought. There was nothing left to think about.

My world was half water, half gray clouds. Blue and gray met somewhere far in the horizon. I was floating in this horizon, powerless against the two dull colors, against their strengths, against their nature.

My floating turned my body slightly, and I saw some goggles with two eyes looking at me from a few feet away.

New thoughts: It’s Douglas. Thank God. Does he see me? Does he know I’m drowning?

If he doesn’t know I’m drowning, I will die.

Seeing someone so close and able to rescue me filled me with renewed energy from somewhere deep in a tucked away corner of my lungs. It was just enough energy to understand what was at stake: if he floated pass me to join the group, I won’t be rescued.

Here’s my other tip about drowning people: they rarely look like they are drowning. We envision flailing arms, but no one is flailing. Out of energy, out of breath, they seem to serenely be floating in the water, enjoying their private contemplations. Many drowning people are swum right past because they look so peaceful and calm, just bobbing in the water.

I didn’t know if Douglas knew this.

We locked eyes, and he seemed to be studying me. I hoped my eyes could speak for my silent lungs.

“Are you okay?” He asked.

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t.

“Are you drowning?” He asked more directly.

I didn’t respond. In my moment of death, I couldn’t tell him about my death. My eyes pleaded for him to see it.

He did see it.

He grabbed me in his arms and lifted me out of the water. Between his strength and his height, he was able to have more balance on the fragile coral, although the waves still sloshed us around. It didn’t matter. I could take my first breath of air.

With each breath I re-centered myself closer to calm. With each inhale, I told myself that I was going to be okay. I was not going to drown today. I was not going to die. Each breath strengthened my exhausted muscles. Each breath brought new life. I couldn’t believe my luck that Douglas hadn’t been with the group. I didn’t want to think about what could have happened, but as adrenaline wore off, reality clouded my mind. Just how many more seconds could I have lived? I wondered. I didn’t know how close I actually came to death. There would be no real way to know, which left me curious and also relieved.

While Douglas yelled for help from our tour guide, I realized I was bleeding from my knees that had been knocked around on the coral. I would later find out I had been hit by fire coral, so named because it leaves a fiery sensation hours afterward. My legs felt like they were burning on fire for the next 24 hours. I’d have deep purple scars for years.

Armed with a lifeguard float, the tour guide came back for me and hauled me to the beach. Flopping down like I had just crawled out of a shipwreck in a movie, I was thankful to be on solid ground. This beach couldn’t take my breath away. I was safe.

Douglas hesitated about joining the group to circle the island and explore the reef, but I insisted that he go. I told him I wanted him to enjoy the tour since I, obviously, would not be, but really, I wanted to gain some privacy and time to reflect. In my little 1.5-acre space, I recounted every moment of what had just happened. Waves of terror washed over me, just like the salty waves had only minutes earlier. I was still in disbelief about how that peaceful, dull horizon almost swallowed me into its depths.

The group came back all too quickly and disrupted my crisis of reliving my drowning trauma, but in reality, no amount of time would have been sufficient for me to work through that. It took some years to wrestle with it. I declined the rest of our snorkeling adventures, opting to sit on the beach and watch Douglas snorkel from a distance. Nothing was going to pull me into that water again. Those dark clouds followed me, in my mind, to snorkel spots I wished to see but didn’t dare try.

Here’s the happy ending: eventually, after a few years, I did get back in the water. I did get to enjoy those beautiful reefs and glorious fish that I once loved and yet feared. I’m a bit more skittish about snorkeling than I was before, but I suppose that’s because one thing did drown that day: my invincibility.

But while my invincibility took its last breath, something else took its first: a new awe for the strength of creation. And I can’t help but yearn to explore it.