It happens piece by piece, a day at a time. You start to realize that you’re not angry, that you’re not anxious. The satisfaction that you used to know starts to sneak in and replace the low-level, humming anxiety that you’ve felt for almost a year. You’re not angry. You’re not sad. You simply are.
Surfing is giving me myself back.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve gone from someone who couldn’t stand up on a surfboard to someone who can paddle into his own waves, and ride them until they fizzle out. This has boosted my confidence, and given me a sense of agency that has been sorely lacking in my life for the last six months.
I’ve been going back through my journal entries from four months ago, when I was still working the job that drove me to the brink of insanity, in a town that opposed everything I stood for. Page after page illustrates how depressed, sad, and listless I was. You can feel the desperation to be somewhere, anywhere else oozing off of the page.
In the last month and a half, I’ve realized just how much I’d gotten used to being sad, and how much of a toll that was taking on my mental and physical health. My journal from that time uses the phrase “playing life" repeatedly. I was acting out being a teacher, being a human, being a friend. That became my base level state, and I brought that to the ocean in Costa Rica.
From the moment I caught my first wave, I knew that surfing was damn sure going to help. It has not dissapointed.
Surfing is velocity as poetry. It’s just you and a thin piece of foam, making the best of the waves that are going to happen anyways, day after day. You don’t have to clear or move anything natural to play. The waves are there, beating against the shore, whether you are there or not. When you decide to be on one small point of the infinity that is the ocean, you can make something beautiful happen.
I understand why therapists perscribe this for PTSD. It’s the most naturally healing activity I’ve ever experienced!
I don’t feel sad or listless anymore, like I have to hide from anything. I feel like a human being again, experiencing deeper emotion, wanting to get to know people, wanting to fall in love.
I have surfing to thank for so much already, and I’m just getting started! Next week I’m off to Santa Teresa, to try my hand at waves that are a bit bigger and more challenging.
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