It’s not morbid fascination. That phrase implies some sort of picking-at-a-scab-and-digging into the macabre due to lack of willpower. That doesn’t suit what I’m going through – A, because it’s not a lack-of-willpower situation, I genuinely want to experience and know more about it, and B, “morbid” by itself is not a word that describes the absolute terror I feel. Maybe I should explain.
Underwater Cave Diving:
There is nothing in existence – at least, of which I’m currently aware – that holds my curiosity so tightly in its grip and simultaneously fills me with such a panic-inducing dread that I break into sweat and forget how to breathe just thinking about it.
I’m not really sure when or how it started. I know I had recurring nightmares as a kid about being stuck in a hollowed out tree stump on the beach while the tide was coming in. If the dreams came first, then surely that would cause the anxiety, but it seems an obvious case of chicken and the egg. Did the nightmares come because of an already-existing fear, or was the eventual fear the product of repeated nightmares? And it’s not just about drowning or the claustrophobia. Everyone is scared of drowning, and most people exhibit at least minor bouts of anxiety when confined in the dark. It’s the combination of the two – the restricted movement as darkness folds over me while choking down frigid water that forms the equation. I tremble as I write about it. And yet…
Even as I look furtively around to make sure water is not about to come flooding into my room, I am thinking about the beauty and majesty of these naturally-formed cathedrals and tombs. I am enthralled by the deep. While it’s no arctic full moon Aurora Borealis, the pristine and lightless depths hold such a beauty that I find myself hoping to overcome my fears, put on 200 pounds of scuba gear, and dive to places unknown. I adore videos of drones exploring old shipwrecks, with the ancient wood covered in strange sea life, silt drifting like snow over the camera lenses. I can’t get enough of cave-diving head cams showing only inches in front of the divers who live in a weightless world of third dimensionality that only aquanauts and astronauts can ever experience.
I suppose the first time I ever truly let it into my headspace (since I’m sitting here pondering my reasons and rationales) was after reading the story of five Finnish divers who met tragedy while exploring Pluragrotta, a deep underwater cave system beneath the Plura river in Norway. I’m not even sure how I stumbled across the story, but one day, it was in some news feed I was reading at the time. It led me down a path of researching the deepest underwater caves, underground lakes and seas, watching documentaries of shipwreck exploration, and eventually the documentary “Diving Into the Unknown,” the sad yet victorious chronicle of the survivors of the Pluragrotta tragedy, breaking the law to recover the bodies of their friends.
(By the way, the movie itself is quite good. The sounds of underwater bubbles and breathing and the beckoning darkness are cinematic in ways I wasn’t expecting of a low budget production. The survivors, who risked everything to bring back their friends’ bodies, are heroes as far as I’m concerned.)
So what words can properly epitomize the feeling of yearning to know everything about a thing – and even wish you had the courage to do the thing – while being paralyzed in fear as it’s on your mind? Here are a few of my suggestions:
- Enthralled Terror
- Pretty obvious, just a better version of morbid fascination
- Alluring Panic
- Closer than morbid fascination and approachable words
- Petrifatuation
- Petrified Infatuation
- Capthysterical
- Pronounced “KAP-tus-TEAR-ical” – Captivated and Hysterical
Looking at these after typing them, they feel trite. They don’t have the gravitas and … oomph… needed to evoke my feelings. I think I’ll need to dig into some foreign languages for this. Much like the various series of posts you can find all over social media of “Perfect words that have no English language equivalent”, my guess is that this emotion already has a defining word somewhere. Maybe someone reading this someday can let me know, but I will keep looking, and update this blog if ever I find what I seek.