I Know People On Tumblr Looove Stories Of Underwater Cave Diving, But I Haven't Seen Anyone Talk About

I know people on tumblr looove stories of underwater cave diving, but I haven't seen anyone talk about nitrogen narcosis aka "raptures of the deep"

basically when you want to get your advanced scuba certification (allowing you to go more than 60 feet deep) you have to undergo a very specific test: your instructor takes you down past the 60+ foot threshold, and she brings a little underwater white board with her.

she writes a very basic math problem on that board. 6 + 15. she shows it to you, and you have to solve it.

if you can solve it, you're good. that is the hardest part of the test.

because here's what happens: there is a subset of people, and we have no real idea why this happens only to them, who lose their minds at depth. they're not dying, they're not running out of oxygen, they just completely lose their sense of identity when deep in the sea.

a woman on a dive my instructor led once vanished during the course of the excursion. they were diving near this dropoff point, beyond which the depth exceeded 60 feet and he'd told them not to go down that way. the instructor made his way over to look for her and found a guy sitting at the edge of the dropoff (an underwater cliff situation) just staring down into the dark. the guy is okay, but he's at the threshold, spacing out, and mentally difficult to reach. they try to communicate, and finally the guy just points down into the dark, knowing he can't go down there, but he saw the woman go.

instructor is deep water certified and he goes down. he shines his light into the dark, down onto the seafloor which is at 90 feet below the surface. he sees the woman, her arms locked to her sides, moving like a fish, swimming furiously in circles in the pitch black.

she is hard to catch but he stops her and checks her remaining oxygen: she is almost out, on account of swimming a marathon for absolutely no reason. he is able to drag her back up, get her to a stable depth to decompress, and bring her to the surface safely.

when their masks are off and he finally asks her what happened, and why was she swimming like that, she says she fully, 100% believed she was a mermaid, had always been a mermaid, and something was hunting her in the dark 👍

So… I have a bit of an announcement to make. It’s hard for me to make and I don’t really know how to eloquently state it, so I just will.

In early July I was diagnosed with cancer, and a rare form of cancer too. Rare enough that the closest specialist is four hours away. Thankfully from what I’ve been told so far, my prospects look good, but we’ve been playing it by ear. However, the time between now and recovery may be long, painful and far too expensive.

 And that’s the difficult part for me to bring up. I was working on a tight budget even before my health became an issue, but it’s even more so now. With medical and school bills now on top of my already strict funds it feels like I’m drowning. I’ve been taking up more hours at work even though I should be on bed rest just to make ends meet, but this will only last so long.

With encouragement from a friend, I set up a donation page on my Ko-fi, now I won’t ask you to donate. But just reading this and possibly sharing this post will be more than enough help! I hope you all will be understanding as well if my content becomes less frequent because of this major life event and I appreciate your patience. However, if you do find that it is possible to help in these trying times, I am so grateful.

Either way if you decide to donate, share this post or have simply read to the end, I wish to say thank you. It has always been my dream to share my passion and work with others and to inspire those who see it. You all make me feel seen and have inspired me to be more. Thank you for making my dream come true and I hope to share more with you all for a long time to come.

Ko-fi

I need everyone to know that the ship Götheborg, the world's largest ocean-going wooden sailing ship, answered a distress call the other day.

Imagine waiting for the coast guard or whatever to show up and instead a replica of 18th century merchant ship pulls up and tows you to the coast.

okay but a fanfic where hawks keeps snapping open his wings around you, and at first you think it’s some kind of bird intimidation thing. look bigger, look scarier, etc etc. you end up working well together; he looks embarrassed every time and he apologizes so you think it’s not a big deal. just one of those things people with mutation type quirks can’t always help.

until one day you’ve got one of those bbc nature documentaries on in the background while you go about your chores. there’s this bird on screen that keeps whipping its wings out in the most extra mating dance you have ever seen, trying to draw attention, trying to look bigger.

the movements look super familiar actually, and you have to stop and think where you’ve seen this before. have you seen this in a gif, maybe?

and then you realize—

no way.

I've been stuck on what MHA oneshots/works to write more of, so I figured I could just do a poll and pray for the best.