Day 85

I sat down with the guys for a victorious post-surf breakfast of bacon, eggs, tortillas and a cold coconut.

“Yo Mela! Mi amigo, Roberto.”

One of the guys from the previous week’s failed surf trip introduced me to a another local surfer. Melanie was a hard name for many people to remember, being so uncommon in Spanish, and “Mel” sounded funny, so my friends started calling me Mela, and it stuck.

Roberto was in his mid-twenties, five foot five and a hundred twenty-five pounds of pure muscle. Like most of the local surfers, he had knotted ropes for arms and a six pack for abs. Roberto gave me the casual Mexican handshake that young people used, an open palm slap followed by a fist bump, “¡Estas bien grande!” he greeted: “You are good and big!”

Big. I was big. At five foot nine, I towered above the locals. I often hit my head on awnings when I walked around the market. On that particular day, I had just surfed three hours without a break, and would paddle out later that afternoon for another four hours. The day before I had surfed eight hours. My back muscles looked like they belonged to one of those bodybuilders, rubbed down with bronze goo, flexing on a stage and forcing a smile. My butt was enormous. While my waist might have been a size 4 or 6, my butt was a 10 or 12. For the last six months I had surfed an average of three hours per day. A perfect day was one in which I surfed at least two hours, did yoga and went for a run.

I was very muscular, yes, but I wasn’t all muscle. Not by any stretch. Like an overly sheltered teenager, off to college for the first time, my appetite rebelled in its newfound freedom. I had been eating as much as I wanted (which was a lot!) of anything I wanted (which included a lot of sugar and processed foods) for weeks. I had cellulite. My legs jiggled when I walked and my thighs rubbed together. My six pack had turned to a soft belly. I had to buy new bathing suits because I was popping out of all my tops. Big. Yes, indeed, I was good and big.  

Roberto reached over and pinched a thick layer of fat covering my thigh. “Come tus huevos mamacita.” Eat your eggs, sexy momma. Emotions flooded in. I knew it was a compliment, but it didn’t feel like one. There I sat in a bikini, no makeup, salty hair, hairy legs, eating a mountain of food, and a man was pinching my fat. Suddenly my ravenous appetite disappeared. The smile left my face and I offered the rest of my breakfast to Roberto, “Gustas un poco?” Roberto pushed my plate back to me, saying something about how I needed power to surf another three hours with him later. Then he grabbed a handful of love handle, licked his lips and uttered the unthinkable, “Come, Gordita.” Eat, chubby girl.

T Minus 4 years

Kurt and a friend were going to surf a very localized, hard-to-access, secret surf break. I was invited along. My heart leapt. Kurt had grown up here, but I was a transplant. By the unwritten laws of surf culture, for better or worse, you don’t bring novice surfers to locally run breaks. And if you are not with a local, you don’t even try to surf there without someone who is. I was in. It felt like a victory. But I was nervous. I felt like crap that day. In fact, I had been feeling a nondescript “crap” feeling for a number of months. At twenty-five pounds under my natural weight, I had no energy, my bones felt cold and the thought of getting off the couch made me a little nauseous. I knew surfing was way above my energy level, and that to surf while feeling the way I did was a great way to get hurt. But I hadn’t yet had a workout that day, and no amount of crappy feeling was going to make me skip a workout! So, it was either surfing or high-intensity interval training. Surfing sounded a lot better.

Hoping a little sugar would pick me up, I threw an apple into my backpack along with my wetsuit, booties and hood. Walking out the door, I second guessed myself.

A whole apple? That’s like 15 grams of sugar! That’s going to knock me out of fat burning mode! I’m going to store that in my liver, which means I’m going to store water with it. I’ve gotta weigh in tomorrow and that’s definitely going to affect my number. No way! I’ll just eat half.

I took out the apple, sliced it in half and stuck it in a ziplock. My anxiety was quieted, for the moment.

Kurt, his buddy and I started the one-mile-plus trek to the surf spot on foot, hiking down a cliff face with nine foot longboards, then across a beach, paddling around a point, walking across a second beach and finally paddling another third of a mile out to the break. I was in agony before we even finished the hike down the cliff. Every cell in my body screamed for fuel. Finding none, my cells went searching for fat to burn. At the time, I was in the single digits for body fat percentage. I know because I checked weekly, carefully recording each skin fold measurement within an app on my phone. Certainly, no glucose was available for fuel, because I hadn’t touched carbs in a year. And no body fat was available for fuel, either. So, my body resorted to cannibalizing its own muscle. I could feel nitric acid being dumped into my system to burn muscle for fuel. It made me nauseous. But I attributed the nausea to having eaten the apple– well, half an apple. Guilt from 7.5 grams of sugar made me want to puke.

As we walked along the cliff, Kurt’s buddy eyed me, remarking “You don’t look too happy…”

More guilt. What’s wrong with me? Get it together! You are being given an opportunity few people ever get!

“I’m just tired today, but I’m stoked to surf,” I lied, more to myself than to him.

By the time we reached the take off zone, I was spent, mentally, and physically. I was nauseous, and the corners of my vision were black. With each paddling stroke, my shoulders screamed for me to stop. I was shivering under my thick, 4/3 wetsuit, even though I had only been in the water for fifteen minutes. I paddled for four waves and missed each one, maybe because I was drained, but probably because I was scared. My subconscious knew that I was in no condition to survive a big wipe out, so when it came time to take the last stroke, the stroke of do-or-die commitment, I backed off.

Kurt’s buddy paddled over and explained to me that the waves were softer than the beach break I was used to surfing, and that I had more time than I thought to make my pop-up. This assurance settled my subconscious, and I went full force on the next wave. I made it to my feet and for a split second felt victorious. But before I could savor the moment, my body, pushed to its limit, said enough is enough. My knees buckled, my board pitched forward and I somersaulted backwards, toward the crashing white water.

Everything went black. Up became down as I spun like a sock in a dryer. A hot flash tore across my shoulder, but panic blocked the pain as I fought frantically to find my leash. I was being dragged underwater by the board, still attached to my ankle, which rode on without me. I thrashed underwater until I caught hold of the leash. My board stood upright on the surface like a tombstone, and I climbed my leash toward a second chance at life. I breached the surface, gasping for air. It wasn’t until the fourth breath that I noticed blood in the water. Although I felt no pain, my fragile body heaved with sobs. What the fuck is wrong with you, you stupid bitch? The Voice was certain that I was an awful human being for taking such a huge wipeout. Humiliated, I let the white water push me to shore so I could calm down before going back out. The boys were still out. I should be out too.

Shivering, I picked up my board and waded to the beach to sit for a minute before mustering up the courage to try again. I examined the board, feeling relief when I saw that a fin was missing.  A three inch gash had been cut though my wetsuit and into my bicep. Pain throbbed and blood issued from my shoulder. I made the connection between the missing fin and the flash of heat I had felt as the wave expended her power on me. With a missing fin, there was no way I could continue my surf session. I was excused.

The boys continued to surf. I made the mile hike back out, dumped my board in Kurt’s truck and forced my tears to shut off. I reminded myself that shivering burns calories, as do physical and mental trauma, and walking. I proceeded to walk the additional two miles home, bleeding, shivering, exhausted and alone.

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I finished my eggs and promptly retired to a shaded hammock. A couple of hours later, I woke and lifted my head to see that Roberto and the guys were already back in the water. The point break was going off on that day; five hundred yard, head-high barrels were lining up. I grabbed my five-foot-ten, high performance shortboard. The paddle out was brutal. The current was so strong that I had to enter a quarter of a mile farther down the beach than the point I wanted to reach. Leaving the sand, it was a sprint paddle against a river-strong current for nearly a quarter of an hour. Heavy sets were coming through. Walls of white wash, tall as trucks, slammed me into the sand ten feet below the surface. I controlled my breathing. Inhale, stroke, exhale, stroke. One final duck dive, dipping my board skillfully under a crashing lip, and I broke free from the impact zone. A huge smile wrapped around my face, I paddled up next to the boys. A big set was stacking up and I was in the perfect spot. Roberto and the other locals were shouting at me, “Go Gordita, go!” The nickname made me laugh. I felt strong as I stroked in, popping to my feet in one catlike movement. My glutes fired as I harnessed the speed from the drop down the face. I pumped my legs, sending the board higher, to the unbroken part of the wave. I could see the lip towering over me. I threw my hand in the face of the wave to slow my speed and let the lip pitch over me, sending me completely inside her barrel. Eyes wide, heart pounding, soul on fire, I ducked just a little…I was just the right size to fit into the ocean’s embrace.

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*some names have been changed to protect privacy

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