So, a few days ago I was walking around town doing errands and I started to think about near-death experiences. Why? Wish I had the answer, but it came to mind and I couldn’t stop thinking about them. So, I’m hoping that by writing them down I’ll bring “closure” and stop reflecting on the subject.
It all began when I started to contemplate how people who have had those experiences drastically change the way they live (sometimes forever). Sometimes, they follow paths that they always wanted but were afraid to do so before having those experiences. It may be related to the fact that I am afraid of facing difficult decisions in the present, but I’ll reflect more on it at a different time.
For now, I was curious to know at what points in my life I was the closest to not being here anymore – just to clarify, I don’t think these would be considered near-death experiences, but they’re the closest experiences I’ve had. (Putting them in chronological order because I like having unbiased systems for things and I couldn’t gage which ones were more significant than others).
Drowning (circa 5-10 years old)
A very young me was at the zoo/park with my uncle and he decided to help me learn how to swim. He was sitting at the bar (one of those pool bars with the chairs inside the swimming pool), so I would swim from the last chair to his chair. Back and forth.
While I got more comfortable, he got more distracted drinking/talking and suddenly I just stopped moving and started sinking. It took a while until he noticed it and brought me out of the pool.
Impact: thankfully, I only ended up with a belly full of chlorine water.
Drowning (circa 10 years old)
Mom, pregnant auntie, sister, and I went on vacation to a countryside hotel in Rio, Brazil. The place wasn’t fancy, but they had a swimming pool with a slide that did 1 or 2 loops and that for young me was incredible!
However, the slide was placed on the deeper side of the swimming pool and my feet were really far from touching the bottom. Unlike the previous story, this time I knew how to doggy-paddle and a very basic freestyle stroke swim so not reaching the floor wasn’t a concern.
I started going up the stairs, down the slide, swimming to the closest border, and then doing it again. And again. And again. And… no. It wasn’t working, I was swimming but I wasn’t moving anymore. My arms and body were too tired. I started sinking. My mom notices, but she can’t swim so my aunt jumps into the pool, big pregnant belly and all and take me outside.
Impact: this time I drank less water (mom was really fast noticing it) but I spent the rest of the trip feeling guilty about my aunt’s belly (because I believed she did a belly flop).
Drowning (circa 12-14 years old)
One would think that by now I’d have learned the dangers of swimming, but this one wasn’t actually a product of my exhaustion, so I guess I did learn that part. Funny(?) that in a place where we’d find snakes, spiders, moray eels, young sharks, and where as a teenager I would walk around playing with big knives and a machete, and went swimming in the sea even when lightning storms where happening, that this story would still fallback to drowning.
I used to go to this deserted beach in a far away island with my father as a teenager. And because it was so small and deserted (there would be in general less than 10 people in the 1km span of the beach, no electricity, no cell phone coverage), my father would just let me roam around as I pleased from a young age.
This one day, the weather was really bad and waves were really high. Because I had been there many times before, and I was actually a lot more comfortable with my swimming abilities, and I really liked going up and down the waves, I decided to go in the water anyway. Since the waves were so high, I actually had to go deep to be just before the line where they would break.
All was going well when, out of sudden, I found myself sandwiched by one of the tall waves going to the shore and the water from the previous wave coming back. I was used to floating/staying up easily, but the moment that happened I just got sucked in and because I had spun on the way down, I completely lost sense of where was up and where was down.
After struggling for a while and starting to feel the my air coming to an end, I felt some sand touch my hands and immediately turned and used my feet to propel myself back up and swim away to the shore.
Impact: I came out of it just with a very string shortness of breath and newfound respect for the sea.
Gun Point (circa 14 years old)
This is a very complicated one because it happened at home, in my own bedroom. Not developing too much on it, but at one stage my father had an altercation with a family member and at the worst part of it, he pointed at a gun at them. Because, to a certain degree, I felt secure that he wouldn’t shoot me, my first instinct was to hug them and act as a shield.
My mom ended up driving us to our aunt’s place (about 1hr from where we lived) and the next day spent the weekend at a nearby coastal city we haven’t been to, to help us feel better.
Impact: unkown. I go years without thinking about it, but then out of nowhere it just comes back and haunts me.
Self Inflicted (circa 16 years old)
One would think that the family trauma would’ve been the most difficult one to write about, but it wasn’t. It’s this one. It’s impossible to try and condense everything in here, but let me try to break it down.
Unstable Family Environment
My teenage years were equal parts amazing and unbearable. Because of the hyper religious background and the fact that I’ve never even met a gay person until I came out, I distanced myself a lot from my family due to being gay.
My mom, who I’m sure loves me immensely, had to take medications to cope with it. My sister, who I’m also sure loves me to pieces, wasn’t ready for this situation and had other problems of her own. My father, who I’m sure loves me in his own way, was the only one in my household who didn’t know about it because he was a homophobe, very aggressive, and quite unpredictable. The three of us (mom, sister, and I) had truly no idea how he would react.
Atrocious Love Life
Not to sound like a cliché, but I spent about a year of my life in love with one of my straight best friends. Well, actually, I spent my whole high school experience not knowing any gay people in my school. There were two guys who were teased about being gay, but because of my internalized homophobia and fear of bullying, I never reached out or talked to any of them. (They were part of a different cluster of friends as well so we didn’t ever share spaces). Anyway, all of that is to say that the only place I could direct my need for loving someone, were to the straight people around me.
What made it last so long and so hard to bear was:
- that this guy knew about it because I had told him in multiple occasions.
- we were extremely close because we were in the same band and so we spent a lot of time together after school and on weekends.
- he was very accepting, so never seemed uncomfortable around me and he would hug me as much as the other friends/band members (but unlike the others, his actions would always be interpreted as “potential signs” in my head).
- and because he didn’t have any girlfriends at the time (he had some later), I’d ask myself if he actually wasn’t into me or if he was just afraid of coming out.
So after a while, I just felt miserable and unworthy of love. (Worth pointing it out here that unlike today where I try to be as rational as possible, at a young age, I was extremely emotionally-driven).
Potential Medication Side Effect
I used to have a lot of pimples. At times, my jawline would completely get lost in all the swelling and it wasn’t abnormal for me to get home and have blood stains in the back of my white high school shirt uniform from exploding zits.
I did many treatments, first with topical creams, then with antibiotics, and then stronger peeling / creams. They’d would work temporarily but the pimples would always return after stopping the treatments. So the last option that was presented to us was to use Isotretinoin (in Brazil sold by the name “Roacutan”). Out of the easily seen side effects, such as having my lips starting to bleed just from a smile or very dry elbows and knees, I never shared with my family signs of what could be other known side effects: depression and suicidal thoughts. Therefore, I never got a diagnose on it.
The Dreaded Day
I honestly can’t remember if anything happened that specific day or if it was just a culmination of all of those problems, I just remember leaving school and walking home with a friend. During the walk, I started bawling my eyes out and I started thinking that that was it. I couldn’t bear suffering any longer. Might as well just walk into traffic and get over with it…
Thankfully my friend hugged me through the last bit of the walk and dropped me off at my apartment.
Impact: a deep emotional scar and a change in behaviour. It pains me a lot to not know what would’ve happened if that friend wasn’t there that day. How badly I could’ve fucked up my life so young.
Gun Point (circa 18 years old)
After getting my first job, I used what was equivalent to about 3 full months of pay to buy a new fancy cellphone because it had an amazing camera (who even remembers a Sony Ericsson K790i/K800i nowadays?).
Because I had to take a bus for 30-40min before getting to work and it is very hot in Brazil, I used to pay more to go in an air conditioned bus that was more comfortable. The layout and structure, was similar to what Greyhound buses are here in Canada.
One day, I was listening to music inside the bus and just before we were getting to the highway, someone entered it, sat on seat across from me, and called my attention (with a sound that in English would be equivalent to “psst”). When I looked, he had a gun pointed towards me.
I was sitting in the middle of the bus and there were potentially another 2-3 people seated scattered around in the seats in front of us. He signalled to me to be quiet and I immediately complied. He asked for my phone. Then my ring (funny part, I wasn’t engaged, just had this $2-$3 commitment ring that my boyfriend and I used to wear). Then asked for my wallet and backpack. After he got everything he wanted from them, he also asked for my shoes. At this point, I was already crying a lot and I just told him “please sir, have a bit of compassion, I’m just on my way to work and these shoes are very worn. Look here, there’s even a hole already on the side of it” (and I pointed to it).
He said “yeah, whatever”. Pressed the button to leave the bus and got out at the following stop. I was very lucky because one of my coworkers in the bank turned to be one of my best friends later and he was there to be an emotional support for me.
I also went to the police station to fill out a report, but because cases like these are so common in Brazil, they don’t even follow up on those.
Impact: I don’t feel comfortable riding in the back of buses anymore. I do it when it’s half full and I want to sit down, but I feel extremely uneasy, it puts me in a high alert “flight-or-fight” mode, and it brings me bad memories.
I also wonder what the outcome would’ve been if I wasn’t “straight passing”. Had it been today with me sporting rainbows, earrings and occasionally painted nails, would I have been lucky to just have my possessions stolen or would I also have become victim of a hate crime? I guess that’s the other impact of it: as much as it was always a dream to leave Brazil (maybe a potential thing to explore why in the future), I knew that I couldn’t feel safe being my full self there.
