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Last year, round about this time, I went kayaking for the first time ever (not whitewater, was just on a lake). My husband loves kayaking and he'd wanted to go with me for a while, so I finally decided to do it. No one explained that I needed to point the nose of the kayak into boat wakes, rather than let them hit the side, so when some large wake hit, I was rolled over into the water. The way it happened, I was bent backwards underwater, so trying to roll back up seemed impossible, and I panicked because, well, I couldn't breathe, so I struggled out of the upside down kayak to get my head above water.

Then the "rescue" efforts began. They (first my husband and his family, and then the kayak rental employees) tried to get me back into the kayak, but I weighed around 260 pounds at the time and had no arm strength, so that was impossible. Then they towed me back to the dock where I realized there was no fucking ladder. So, 3 people had to haul me onto the dock (god only knows how many pounds my waterlogged jeans, hoodie, sneakers, etc added to my already cumbersome weight). I also lost my glasses in the lake. And I wasn't even that far from the dock. I think I'd been in the kayak for maybe 10 minutes.

I was so afraid and so ashamed and embarrassed and horrified. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. When I told my mom the story a couple of weeks later, trying to make it sound funny, she told me she was worried because despite laughing and making light, my face was full of fear. She thought I might be developing PTSD from the event, and told me to talk about it, to not let it fester. I tried. But I remained so ashamed and disgusted with my inability to save myself, and no one else really seemed to get how scary and awful it was. Their responses were sort of like "oh what a bummer!"

Today my husband went out kayaking with his family in honor of his birthday. I joked about how I wouldn't go - "haha well you know I'M not going!" *nudge nudge wink wink*. But now that the house is empty and I'm sitting here thinking about alone, I still feel like shit. I still feel like a bit like crawling in a hole to die.

There's not any moral to the story. I just felt like I had to tell someone.