Day 100
At last, I heard report that the roads were now cleared of boulders and repaired after the earthquake. I was exhausted. I needed civilization.
I had escaped a close brush with death in the earthquake. For ten days, I had relied on the kindness of strangers to survive, with no access to food, water or shelter. These experiences made concrete some of the truths my trip had taught me:
I couldn’t control a single thing, even if I had wanted to. And I was utterly at peace with that.
I had gone through hell with my marriage, my body, my finances, and I had survived. I was now on the other side.
I had been stripped bare of everything, yet was fully provided for and, might I say, happier than ever.
There was nothing to accomplish, nothing to produce, achieve or become. There was no need to control how I spent my time.
There was no one to impress with my body, no one to judge me for my food choices.
There was no Mom, who might find out what kinds of naughty things I was doing. I had no need to control my desires.
The practices of sleeping as many hours as I wanted, eating what I wanted, when I wanted and as much as I wanted, spending the hours of my day doing the things I wanted and going where I wanted, were changing my life. My energy was steady and my thinking clear. I felt my thoughts coming more quickly. A hundred days without the old stressors had allowed my body to exit fight- or-flight mode, and enter a state of simple beingness. With no need to plan around anyone else or consider the desires of anyone else, I was forced to listen to my own desires. And, spending time on my own meant there was no need to maintain external appearances; I felt no anxiety over possibly being judged for the decisions I made.
When I received a reasonable offer for my yoga studio in San Diego, my desires registered loud and clear. I didn’t have to think twice. I left my perfect waves and cliffside home, found an internet cafe, printed, signed, scanned and emailed the paperwork back to the broker. And, just like that, my life in San Diego was over. I bought a plane ticket home to train the new owner and to get rid of any remaining items I had in storage. But I left my truck, my puppy and my surfboards in Mexico with a friend. I was certain that I was coming back.
After two days in San Diego, I had completely lost my voice. My voice was how I got what I wanted. I was very good with my words. But with the language barrier, and all the time I was spending solo, I hadn’t spoken much at all in three months. I had gotten used to going with the flow, rather than arguing for my way. After four days in San Diego, I had the flu, completely run down from the stress of reinhabiting my old life. After ten days of weight scales and full length mirrors, access to salads and SoCal botoxed women everywhere, I regressed into restrictive eating behaviors. I felt like a big fat cow. After two weeks in San Diego, I couldn’t wait to get back to the simple life, nothing to prove, no one to impress, no goals or accomplishments to pursue. All I wanted to do was to be. My days of trying to prove myself were over.
I had arrived, I had made it, The Voice assured me. I was going back to Mexico. From here on out, life would be perfect.
Going Big
Day 114
After closing up my life in San Diego, I returned to the “Mexican Pipeline”, the world-famous Zicatela Beach in Puerto Escondido. This particular beach earned its nickname with waves that behave very similar to those of the “Banzi Pipeline” on the North Shore of Oahu. I choose this location to set down roots mainly because it was a civilized town with nice apartments to rent, yet still affordable. And I could have plenty of work teaching yoga. I wanted to surf there, but had yet to do so.
At the Mexican Pipeline, the ocean slopes up steeply, or the land falls away quickly, whichever way you want to look at it. This slope creates a shelf beneath the surface of the water. Storms formed in the South Pacific travel from south to north across the globe. Having gathered steam in their travels, the storms hit this underwater shelf at Zicatela with astonishing force. The waves jack up in size and break top-to-bottom, the lips of the waves pitching forward to create hollow tubes. A surfer can attempt to wedge herself inside of such tubes. The dangers of attempting this maneuver are numerous and severe.
First, if you don’t paddle fast enough, and don’t get to your feet fast enough, the lip will pitch you over the top. Surfers call this “going over the falls.” The name is apt, which any surfer knows when she has experienced the weight of a waterfall drilling her to the ocean floor.
Next, if you do happen to catch the wave and get to your feet at the exact right time, and manage to get yourself into the barrel, then you have to worry about getting yourself out of it. Too much weight on the back foot, and you are dragged up the face of the wave, once again to be spit “over the falls”. Too much weight on the front foot, and you nosedive. You must generate enough speed so that, when the barrel reaches its finish, you come out before the lip closes briny curtains on you. But you want to stay in as long as possible, because…well, because it feels better than sex.
Getting barreled is like union with the divine. Imagine a lover so glorious, so massive, so infinitely more powerful than you. The lover allows all of you, your entire being, to come inside and experience her greatness for just a second or two. She permits your entrance only if you are good enough, respectful enough, gentle enough, strong enough, practiced enough and completely willing to abandon any attempt to dominate. She requires you to harmonize yourself with her own motion. And, even then, it is completely up to her whether you enter, and whether you get to leave alive. That is getting barreled.
Of course, there are further dangers after you finish a wave. There are always more waves just behind. Each one waits to smash you as you attempt to get back to the spot where you started.
Now, take all of those dangers, turn the dial up to 11, and you have a big day at Zicatela. The waves, already notorious for being more powerful than any other place on earth, present faces that reach sixty feet.
So, after quitting my entire life, I returned back to the Mexican Pipeline. I paid up front for five months of rent on a small apartment and got a job teaching yoga. There was nothing left to control. I bore no more worries about money or body fat percentages. I had plenty of attention from men. I could eat whatever I wanted, surf as much as I wanted, stay out dancing with boys as late as I wanted. There was nothing left to struggle against, no drama. Nothing was left to accomplish, achieve, produce or become. At last, I could quit trying to prove anything to anybody. I could just be present, living a simple, Mexican seaside life.
Life was perfect. Way too perfect. I became completely depressed.
Every problem I had been fighting to control had vanished. Now I had a new problem: there were no problems.
When Kurt and I were newly married, he’d received an invitation to stay with a friend in Puerto Escondido. The stay happened to be over my birthday. He asked if I cared, and I said I didn’t. I lied. But it was a surf trip and, being a surfer myself, I understood. When Kurt returned from Puerto Escondido, he had no gift for me, no souvenir, nor had he surfed Mexican Pipeline. He hadn’t felt comfortable approaching the Pipeline, opting to surf some other, safer locations. Kurt was a very good surfer. He was my surf mentor. He had been surfing for over thirty years. He knew his limits. And now, I woke each morning to see those same, expert-level waves, breaking just a hundred yards from my front porch. But I was too afraid to surf them.
I realized my new struggle: Surf Mexican Pipeline.
A thousand reasons not to try it flooded my mind. What if I break my board or my leash and get held down without flotation? What if the lip lands on my back or my knee and I get injured? There were risks. Very real risks. I wasn’t afraid, but I had massive respect for the power of those waves.
Every morning for a few weeks, I took my camera and a mug of coffee to the beach, talking to surfers as they entered and exited the water. I photographed the waves and studied the surfers’ movements. I made mental notes about where they paddled out and how they handled being caught in the impact zone after a wipe out. One day, I left my camera at home, taking a pair of fins instead. It was a “small” day, but I could tell it was more powerful than anything I had ever experienced in the water. And I was going to enter without a surfboard, without a giant floatation device strapped to my ankle.
I spotted a group of surfers I knew. I swam to them so as not to be alone. Arriving at the group, I explained that I was testing the speed and power of the wave, getting to know it. I felt a little more confident knowing they were going to be watching for me. A set came through, and I dove deep to avoid it. The final wave of the set was the biggest, and I was in a bad position. I dove as deep as I could, but it was shallow. My belly scraped the sand, just a few feet deeper than the crashing lip. I was unable to avoid the most tumultuous part of the wave. I completely surrendered to the washing machine effect and, several seconds later, was released on the other side of the wave, gasping for air, drained of energy, but alive like never before.
The swell lingered over the next couple of days, and I body surfed six or eight powerful waves. With no board and no popping up to my feet, I was able to experience the feeling of hurdling myself over the ledge with no risk of getting impaled by my board or dragged underwater by my leash. My confidence grew.
I waited for the next “small” day, finally paddling out on a surfboard, I sat where the waves seemed smallest. It took several minutes of all-out battle just to get past the breaking whitewater. It took an additional hour to catch two waves. I fell on the first, but was thrilled with myself for having even attempted it. The second wave barreled, and I felt a rush of victory just before it smashed me inside. I clearly remember surfacing for a breath and saying to myself, ”Oh my gosh, I can surf this place!”
I continued to surf for the next several weeks, any time the waves were small. My wave count was improving and so was my confidence. Each session felt like a triumph when it was over, but felt like a war zone while I was in it. I glanced constantly at my watch, hoping two hours had passed so I could call it a day. Every second stretched my comfort zone. I was so loaded with adrenaline that it exhausted me.
When the waves got too big for my skill level, I would peer through my camera to watch the better surfers. They pulled into barrels big enough to hold a house. It was almost a relief when the swell outsized my skills. When people asked me if I had surfed that day, I could respond, “Oh, no way, too big for me!” It was nice to have an excuse not to go out. I knew I had to respect my limits. The Voice reminded me that because I had started surfing as an adult, it was much too late to hope to become good at it; the best I could ever hope for was to be intermediate. It was best just to relax and enjoy the show. But my heart told me I could do anything I wanted to do. Never in my life had intermediate been acceptable. I was either the ugliest in the room or winner of the beauty contest. The little girl inside of me who had been told that women were created to submit to men wanted so badly to join the men out there on the battlefield…just to prove she could.
__________
*some names have been changed to protect privacy
__________
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