Nobody saw anything.

For over six years, I've been carrying this weight on my chest.

I've never told anyone. Not my family, not my friends. I don't even really know why I'm writing this here today. Maybe just to get it out somewhere. So it exists outside of me.

820 meters of cable, 30 km/h, towed on my knees on a kneeboard—a Velcro strap tightly across my thighs to hold the board. Everyone was falling on the turns, which is normal, it's part of the fun. We laughed, we did it again. The atmosphere was lighthearted.

First lap, no problem. Second lap, no problem. On the third, I reached the second-to-last gate. The cable suddenly snapped, and I fell like the previous times.

Except this time, the Velcro didn't come undone.

With the weight of the board, it flipped over. And me with it. I found myself upside down, underwater, my thighs still strapped to the board.

I didn't panic. My father had taught me that since I was little: panic is your worst enemy. In those moments, it steals the few seconds that can change everything. I still remember it clearly—that thought that comes first, even before the fear: stay calm.

I try to unfasten myself. Once. Twice. The Velcro holds firm. I try to force it, to slide my thighs out of the strap. Nothing. They're completely locked, like they're in a vise.

I stop trying. It takes too much energy, and I can feel I'm already reaching my limit. Every unnecessary movement is a second lost.

I try to bring my head back up toward the surface. I twist, I lean over as far as my body allows.

I'm two centimeters short. Maybe three.

I could see it, the surface. I could see it—that silver line above me, within sight, almost within reach. My nose couldn't reach it. It was there, so close, and yet completely out of reach. It's a feeling I still can't quite describe. A total, physical frustration that settles over my entire body at once.

So I decide to make some noise. I bang hard on the board, splash with my hands, and wiggle around to create splashes visible from the shore. There are adults on the dock. They're watching, of course. It's their job. They'll see me, or at least hear something unusual.

No one comes.

I give up. Not out of resignation—because the urge to breathe is becoming uncontrollable. My body wants to inhale; it's what it's always done, it's what it knows how to do. And I have to tell it no. Just one more second. Just one more.

That's when the real battle begins. Not against the water, not against the scratch. Against myself. Against my own reflexes. A silent, invisible struggle, one that no one around me knows anything about.

The options disappear one by one.

The scratch. No.

Strength. No.

The surface. Too far.

The noise. No one.

And when there's nothing left, the brain panics in its own way. It stops looking for solutions, stops reasoning. It shrinks to a single thing, repeated endlessly, louder and louder, more and more urgent:

Breathe.

Breathe.

BREATHE.

And there, head down underwater, I felt like crying.

Not rage. Not fear, strictly speaking. More like a deep, strange sadness—the kind you feel when you realize it's the end. Not in the abstract, not as a hypothesis. Concretely. Right there. Now. My limit was there, and there was little I could do about it.

That's when I took the first sip.

Good God, it hurt. Not like I'd imagined—not just a simple feeling of suffocation. The water had torn away the entire surface of my throat as it descended, and I could feel my lungs burning from the inside, as if something were being consumed. And immediately, the reflex to cough—violent, irresistible. I held it back with all my might, because I knew, instinctively, that if I gave in, it would be over. Coughing underwater means swallowing again. And again.

I tried the scratch one last time. My fingers were trembling, my movements less precise than before. With more despair than hope.

It gave way.

I didn't even have time to realize. I was already rushing toward the surface. And my torso was moving on its own—my diaphragm contracting in spasms, simulating breathing without air, like an engine stalling. My body no longer truly belonged to me. It wanted to live, in its own way, without me.

In my head, a single phrase, on repeat:

I'm almost there. Don't breathe. I'm almost there. Don't breathe.

And then the air.

The breath hurts as much as it feels good—my lungs suddenly expand, my throat burns even more intensely on contact with the air. I drag myself toward the bank as best I can, my arms heavy, my legs barely responding. And then, finally, I cough. For a long time.

I turn back toward the starting dock. Everything is normal. People are chatting amongst themselves. The riders continue their laps, towed by the cable, to the steady, indifferent hum of the motor.

No one had seen anything.

A few seconds later, I would have drowned. Alone. In the middle of a group.

I stayed for a while at the water's edge, catching my breath.

I felt the tears welling up, the kind you hold back because you don't know how to explain them, because there's no one to explain them to. The realization of what had just happened was slowly sinking in, like cold water. And then I stood up. I went back to the group. I rejoined the line, the Velcro straps on my thighs again, my throat still burning, fear lurking somewhere in my chest. And despite all that, despite the fear that it would happen again, despite my lungs not having fully recovered...I continued the activity.

As if nothing had happened.