The First Time (Trigger Warning)

 

It started with a dream—move to California, learn how to surf. So when a group of new neighbors invited me to try it for the first time, I said yes without actually thinking about how this would realistically pan out.

It was a warm summer evening, and I had the equivalent of road rash on my knuckles from spending half a day trying on at least 14 wetsuits at four different stores. The waves looked small from the cliff. "This should be chill," I thought to myself. That was my first critial error—thinking waves are chill.

Owen, my neighbor, looked back at me as we were walking out to the ocean and reminded me for the tenth time that he would NOT be helping me. Second critical error: thinking I could figure out surfing on my own. 

Then they told me to paddle way out, and it was in that moment that I realized I had just used all my energy to get to what felt like the middle of the ocean. 

Before I could complete that thought, a giant wave (the same tiny one from the cliff) took me out. Inhaling a bunch of sea water was now the only thing on the agenda as one wave after another kept testing my patience—and survival rate. 

I knew that if I didn't flee the scene immediately, this wasn't gonna end well. The only words I could get out were "Bye guys!"  and the rest of the energy I used to get back to shore came straight from my fight or flight response— I don't even remember how I got back on the beach but I can only imagine that it did not look graceful.

While sitting on the shore, still in a state of shock, a man in a wetsuit holding a surfboard comes up to me asking if the waves are good. "Good? You mean deadly?" I managed to get out in between coughs. He looked confused. "I almost died, bro."  I said it in a way that sounded like a warning, but it didn't seem to phase him. He replied, "Wanna go back out there with me?" I just stared in disbelief. The audacity to invalidate my trauma was too much for me to handle. Who is this man that spawned out of nowhere asking me to essentially put my life on the line again?

I knew that if I didn't flee the scene immediately, this wasn't gonna end well. 

Pacific Beach is a paradise full of palm trees, cotton candy sunsets, and bubbles...so long as you stay out of the water and on the sand, which is where I intend to be for the rest of the summer—maybe even forever. In the event that I did try surfing again, here's what I would do differently:

1. Get therapy. To recover from the first time and prep for the second time.
2. Start a long-term relationship with the treadmill. No one told me you need to have the lungs of a track star to get on a surfboard but now I know.
3. Stay near the shore. I don't care what people say about paddling past where the waves break, I will be surfing in knee-high water.
4. Get an instructor. Must be a man and must also be sexy.

And that was my first time.