surfing and the thousandth broken heart

When you don't surf, it looks really cool. Really cool. Cool people, cool gears, cool tunes, hot chicks, hot dudes, lazy, sunny summer lifestyles, staying young, living forever, sunbleeched hair and tan toned bodies ... But when you start to do it, (I say this from the most limited of experiences) I mean, get a board and stop posing around in your boardies and start working your ass off trying to learn how it works and what to do, it intsantly isn't cool anymore.
It's not cool; It's the most beautiful, blissful obsession that taints every single day with it's brush and you wouldn't have it any other way.

It'd take me an hour or two to even begin describing the small overpowering awesome ways in which it gives you fullness in your heart (and I will) but for now i will briefly say, making it out through the white frothing dogs of white wash, ducking and catching it in the jaw, paddling til your arms are like molten lead burning at their centre, but you still gotta paddle four more strokes to make it to backline ... backline, where the world is still wtihout any human influence, nobody can stay there, and nothing can stay the same, it's just for now, sea undulating and you undulating gently on it, Lady Moana having slow aching orgasms, creating wave after wave for you to watch, each one perfect and like offspring with their own personalities and yet similar characteristics.
Seeing the set coming, turning, and paddling your fricken ASS off , getting the timing right so the wave scoops you up and is bolting like a wild horse, barely holding onto it's mane, a swarm of joyous players holding you above its head on moving shifting hands like the winning goal scorer in the soccer world cup yes? You are TEARING through the sky. Catapaulted on a this roaring 747 of seawater. It's kinda violent, It thumps you from every side, from underneath, spray whips you in the eyes. But it is wonderful. It makes me involuntarily scream, with joy and delight and it is right now and this is all there is and nothing could be any better. Now now now.

I am truely a beginner. I'm just learning about placing myself on the board and getting my feet through and i can get up but I teeter and fall off and wipe out. But if I caught it and rode it for five minutes to the shore, with a whole bunch of snazzy turns and jumps, I couldn't be having more fun. It couldn't be any more exciting or better than just being there.

And then you're in at the beach, and you might be tired, but the joy of that last wave turns you, picks up your board, and drives you back out into the sea.
Thats why I call it an obsession. The wave is your one true love, unparalleled in her beauty. When you are together, you are full and done, filled in and zipped up and expanding outwards, radiating, utterly big and painfully happy. And then she pushes you away and the ride is the most exhilerating thing, but once you are gone from her, you crave to immediately get back, to the honey centre, get back on the rollercoaster, because to be at the top, at the top looking down, riding it....You must have it. Always now you must seek it.

And it's HARD work. It's physically the hardest thing I have ever done (including running a half marathon, cycling, swimming, mountainbiking, rock climbing, and a 7hour triathlon). It is the ONLY activity I have ever done that makes me want to, completely, once and for all, never look back and stop smoking.
A smokers a smokers a smoker. Ask any smoker. And thats me.
Until last night when I thought I was going to drown and had an acute realisation of the space in my lungs being the direct line to my survival. Funny how thats taken 15 years.

I waited for my bro to finish work then we put the boards in the car and cruised out to Piha. I had been watching the surf cams all day and was gagging to be out there. it was meant to be 1-2ft. thats sweet words to me. big enough for fun small enough to learn.

We get there, it's drizzling, sun is just yawning stretching and thinking about retiring, we've got at least an hour to an hour and a half of light. we suit up and survey the waves, and decide to paddle out towards lions rock where they seem to be catching lots of sweet looking lefts.

Adri beats me to backline by a whole minute. I've got so much work to do. that night on the wines and a half a packet of cigarettes the other night are laughing at me like the devil with its claws around my chest.

I make it out and see straight away that, these are the biggest waves i've been in. I'd say i'ts 3ft. But waves aren't really measured in feet, when you're out there, they're measured in increments of fear. And these waves are, to me, scary. I can JUST handle them coming towards me. Just.

I catch one in, lose it, tumble, get hammered. muck around in the white water. paddle back out.
Get back out to backline and say to my bro, these are a little bit too big for me ahy.
"It's just water" he says. and i think, yeah, maybe i need to check my fear, it's only water.

The next set comes. They're huge. They're beautiful light green, being lit from behind by the lemon light of the sinking sun. But they are moving walls with a deep rumble emitting from their throats. I wait to see a lip form to know the power is abating, not growing, but it doesn't form, and the wave grows and grows gathering speed and power, louder and closer every split second. I turn and start paddling for it.

And i bloodywell make it. I'm right on top and this fucker is moving so goddam fast, I'd like to know how fast, but if you have been on a skateboard going downhill and it's too steep and your hanging on by your HOPE only? A bit like that.

I only have time to think: FUCK.
and then I am SPAT forward of this wave and into the churning bowels of it's fury.
Gollywog. Ragdoll. Boneless toy in the jaws of a ferocious remorseless giant. I am hurled forwards and backwards upside down twisting turning buckling. I am being Held Down.
I shoot my hands up and straight out as it is always my instinct to do, to find the air. And they don't reach it.
First moment of panic, cuz i need to be up outta here, now. I have my eyes wide open and it is light in the sea, I kick my feet down .. no ground.. I take two big breaststrokes as hard and strong as i can and hope this is UP ... but it isn't, or it is but i'm not out yet.

And right now, i need to breath right now. Remembering the fear of this brings tears to my eyes.
I'm fully paniccing now. And involuntarily my mouth opens and my body starts sucking in water needing it to be air but unable to differentiate, just sucking, sucking, I take the largest lungfuls of water into me. I reach down to undo the ankle strap connecting me to my board, because in my panic I associate it with my being trapped, but thank GOD I can't find my own leg in this death trap because my board is definately my BEST hope at getting out. And in that way you have lots of time to think when disastrous things are happening I think:

I'm going to drown. This happens. This happens to me. Today. Dad said swim in two's but it didn't help.
I think: Are there life guards? but it's going to be too late. I remeber my beautiful friend, ex and surf teacher saying to me: the only thing that makes it easy to not smoke is being held down by a set at Piha. And now i know now exactly what he means. My lungs just aren't big enough. I'm outta oxygen. This is it.

And then a few seconds after my brain is saying FUCKING EMERGENCY, miraculously I make it out. I could cry with relief but there isn't time because no more than two seconds later the second wave of this set Crashes into the sea right next to me and i'm down again.
I suck in as much air as I can as it takes me down and with it lots of water and i'm under again my mind crying NOOOOOO!!!!! I can't go down again, I won't make it.

This one doesn't take as long, but i'm already exhausted, I can't fight or swim or reach or do anything but flail. I'm kinda resigned to this now. I stop thinking. I feel my body lose it's strength and my mind go fizzy and darker with lack of oxygen and then I pop up and my board is right there and it takes all my strength to grab it and hold on and pull myself on, and then i make myself push out two big strokes towards the beach, and I don't know if I think it or say it but out comes: Get me out of here. I don't know if i'm talking to God, the board, or the sea. I just need rescuing. Anyone. Help. Now.

And the next wave is just that. It breaks more gently and I manage to stay up on the white water and it shuttles me back in. I lie on my board exhausted in less than a foot of water with my arms hanging and my hands dragging on the sand, as little wave after wave wash me closer and closer to shore. I just lie there.
I didn't drown.
I thought I was going to and I haven't.

And the next thing I think is, I look up to the hills, the land, beautiful solid earth, and i think, i'm getting out of here and i'm never getting back in. I don't care. Never.
I get to my shaky feet and my brother appears. He saw me paniccing and he saw me go down for a long time and he's come in to see if i'm okay. I'm like, i nearly drowned. He still doesn't really see the severity of the situation. He's like, i should stay with you, wanna paddle out with me? I laugh coldly. No, i'm going to stand here for awhile, then i might play in the shallows.
He says: it's alright.

But right now. It's not alright. I want it to be alright though. I don't want this to get the better of me. I feel stupid too. And I ache in my chest where my heart is hurting and miss my ex, badly, who taught me to surf and always takes care of me and wouldn't have let that happen to me...
Or maybe you can't stop that happening and everyone wipes out. Yeah. Everyone wipes out. Everyone gets held down....
Maybe it's time to take care of yourself now.

I realise, that this is a probably a really good learning experience. The words, get back on the horse, are going through my head. Get back on the horse. And i spend twenty minutes wading, inch by inch, back into the water. Fighting my fear and my instinct to run from danger.
Watching the waves with your eyes peeled and your heart in your ears, the way you would watch a big black crazed dog you were locked in a cellar with, who had just attached you and taken a big bite out of you but now seems to have settled down in the corner. You don't know. You can't trust it. But you can't go anywhere, so be smart and make small considered movements.

There's another chick in the surf with me and she's a few metres ahead and she's right, thats a good spot to catch the ones that break close and nice and gently but with power and practise our getting up on the board. I watch her and i'm so proud of her when she makes it up. Yeah go girl! Cuz it's hard being shit at this and taking it in the face.

So this is what I do. and in awhile i'm happy again. and i'm so happy im' still in the sea and this hasn't got the better of me. AND I have some major success getting both feet through and onto the centre of the board and standing!!!! yay!!!!!
I'm going to get the hang of this someday, I really am.

I get a chance to appreciate the most beautiful sunset, the sun is bright burnt peach, simmering in a sky of cornflower blue with soft ribbons of cloud, water colour streaks of pink and peach, the blue turning to lilac as night crawls up and the sun rapidly sinks.
I think of you, I wish you were here to see this with me. I want to tell you, I survived my first wipe out! I want your pride and your joy.
But with the thousandth broken heart I have to have this to myself and that be enough..
and just be grateful to you for getting me riding last summer and teaching me enough for me to be out here.
Relationships end but surfings forever ;)

NB. For the sake of my fragile human ego.. looking back.. those waves were at least as tall if not taller than the men riding them.. that makes them at least 5ft doesn't it?!... anyway, incremenets of FEAR!!!
:)