For The Love of Surfing

March 25,2017- 9:17pm

Pantai Saroke, Nias, North Sumatra, Indonesia

I’m laying here in bed, wide awake and far from an ounce of sleep.

I’m stoked.

Today was the best surf session I’ve had in the longest time. I wasn’t surfing massive waves and I wasn’t doing anything too impressive. But I was absolutely SENDING IT. Usually, I surf like I am under a microscope, and it prevents me from trying. I am so terrified of failure and of how hard on myself I will be if I make one single error.

Today, there was a dude out in the water, who wasn’t even on a board, by the way. He was the most obnoxious individual and continued pestering me, asking me all sorts of questions about my surfing. He was wondering how I surfed since I lived in America and “there are no waves in America.” He was doing everything in his power to absolutely piss me off, and it was surely working. Normally, I would have let that really get to me, and I wouldn’t have paddled for a single wave due to the fear of making a mistake in front of this guy when I felt I had to prove myself.

For some odd reason, I reacted the opposite. I was so irritated by this nuisance of a person; I knew my only option was to rip and prove him wrong. And baby did I rip!! I surfed with absolutely nothing holding me back.

I put my head down and committed to every single wave I took. And I charged. Waves weren’t too big (for Nias, at least,) but I made my point and damn did it feel good. As I paddle back out to the line up after my first wave, peanut gallery is pretty darn quiet.

Hmm… I proved my point and it felt GOOD. From then on, I had no problem with this guy. He backed down and shared some appreciation for me being the only foreigner in the water. As well as being the only girl.

Every wave I took, I heard my new little buddy yelling as loud as he possibly could for me, cheering me on. I took this as a lesson from life. It was definitely a moment that I was being put to the test. Would I let this jerk treat me how ever he wanted in the water, and let it affect what I took away from that paddle out? Or would I take over the situation and send it right back to him?

I surfed so confidently, which is something I haven’t done in years. When I went to college in San Diego, I decided to try out for the surf team, and I made it. While competing in California, my confidence was completely shot. I was surfing among kids who spent every second of their childhood improving their surfing, and revolving every aspect of their life around it. Cats out here were just that good, they were really good… and completely out of my league.

It became something I dreaded doing, I hated it and I felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t as good as everyone in California, and I would really beat myself up over it. It got to the point where I would sit for hours in the line up, without paddling for one wave. Then finally, I’d take one wave and go in. I was humiliated and I was over it.

I hated the possibility of failure that awaited me. This really set me back. I could have improved so much within this time frame while living out there, but I let the fear of disappointing myself get in the way. Now, I realize that this extreme stoke is far worth any moment of feeling uncomfortable. I suddenly remembered why I surfed in the first place. Something about this wave took me home. It took me back to the feeling I got so hooked on in the very beginning.

I’m gonna make thousands of more mistakes when I am surfing, but as long as I am charging it, I don’t care. As simple as this sounds, this is a mindset that has taken me over a year to get to. If I am surfing the utmost hardest I can possibly surf, I don’t care how many mistakes I make, because I’m trying. Because this feeling is worth anything. This rolling around, no way I’m sleeping mindset, with a smile slapped so big across my face is 100% totally worth it. It was so worth my arms feeling like they are detaching from my shoulder. God, I miss this feeling. It is worth the constantly checking my clock, hoping it is almost 6am so I can do it all over again.

A piece of me that has been missing for so long has finally been returned. I feel like I am twelve years old again and trying to sleep before going surfing in the morning. Growing up, my mom and I would travel two hours south just so I could surf every weekend.

I vividly remember going to bed at 9pm and just laying there for hours tossing and turning because I was so damn excited to surf in the morning. Once I finally fell asleep, I’d dream only of surfing, I swear. Dreams of me surfing breaks like Pipe or Teahupo’o, even though both of those waves were completely and irrevocably too intense for me then (and still!) I’d dream of the waves that I had cut out of magazines and tapped all over various corners of my house.

My alarm would go off at 6:30am and there wasn’t one time that I even came close to missing it or wanting to hit snooze. Nine times out of ten, I was up before my alarm, patiently waiting for the sun to rise. I was out of bed, ready to go, and done putting the board on the car by 6:40am and budging my mother to wake up to drive me to the beach so I could go surf.

She was the best about this, always. We’d head right to the beach, blasting the same two songs the entire way. I was so stoked, and it was something we shared. We’d get to the beach and I’d surf until the sun went down, taking one or two very small breaks to make sure my mom was watching. No matter the size or condition of the waves, I would be out there surfing from dawn tim dusk. Ah, the good days when you’re young and have the stamina of a cheetah.

On the way home it would go one of two ways. I’d repetitively ask “did you see that wave” about every single wave I took. I would go so in depth about each particular wave and my mother would just keep feeding the stoke reminding me how proud of me she was. We would talk for hours about one particular cut back, or one specific instance of me out-paddling a man twice my age. The positivity never ceased. This is what kept me coming back, time and time again.

Or if I had a day that I wasn’t too satisfied with, I’d be silent. I wouldn’t say a word, unless it was something about how I am never surfing again and wanted to sell my board. It was so extreme, because the passion was so damn deep. I had so much drive and wanted nothing but to surf and to excel at it. It was a desire deeper than any desire I’ve had, to this day.

As I got older I lost that. I never lost the love, but I let the bullshit get in front of it. I started to worry about what people thought of my surfing; I’d get so in my head about every move I made. The most minute errors would prevent me from doing anything even related to surfing. I didn’t even want to watch my favorite surf films, I hated it.

As I got a little bit older, I started to travel all over the place and surf as many different types of waves as I could. I would start to compare myself to the people I would see surfing these waves, which only caused the negativity towards the sport, my passion, to grow.

I never allowed myself to use the fact that I grew up two hours from any waves as a reason why I wasn’t surfing as good as these people I met along the way. I was permanently disappointed in myself when it came to my surfing.

But today something clicked. Something awoke the twelve year-old stoked grommet inside of me. Something reminded me why I fell so damn head over heels for this sport in the first place.

I stayed in the water until well after the sun went down, paddling for anything I thought that constituted as a wave. I started trying power hacks and any other crazy maneuvers that I normally couldn’t fight my ego to even attempt anymore.

It was the most liberating feeling; I had finally broken out of the shackles that were hindering my surfing for so long. I don’t think the transition is going to be like the flick of a switch, but I know I am headed in the right direction and that is all that matters. I promise to no longer let the small mistakes or bad days affect my overall love for the sport.

So watch out guys, because I’m coming in hot and the fire is burning bigger than ever.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why they call it the second best wave in the world, because it ignites something inside of you that was put out far too long ago. Because it reminds you why you are here, doing what you’re doing.

It takes you home.