Never Turn Your Back On The Ocean

On a hike to Onomea Bay on the Big Island of Hawaii, I watched a little boy play in the rocks near the water, his parents close by. A surprise wave hit him in the back and soaked him. Startled, he moved higher up the beach, while his dad admonished him:

“Never turn your back on the ocean.”

I’ve proclaimed my love for the ocean for decades. Yet, I never actually swam in the ocean until this trip.

I lived my first two decades in a part of Germany with a mild and rainy climate, dotted with rolling hills and rivers, small lakes and forests. I spent my second two decades in Montana, nestled beneath steep mountains and buried under more snow than I’d ever seen. More rivers and lakes and forests, but never the ocean.

I dreamed of the ocean and I talked of the ocean and I sometimes stood with my toes in the sand staring at it for a long time. On a visit to see family in Maryland when I was a teen, we went to Ocean City, where I stood in the water on an overcast, windy day. On my senior class trip, I made out on a beach in Malta with my first real boyfriend. On a work trip to Florida with Rob years back, I almost took my clothes off and ran into the ocean in my underwear. I didn’t. On a family vacation to Oregon, I remained on the sand while counting the heads of our six children and forever calling them to come back, you’re too far out!

My phone storage is full of long weekends and one road trip down the West Coast, Washington, Oregon, and California. Always pictures and videos of the ocean crashing into rocks, rolling onto beaches. But zero pictures of me in the ocean.

I loved the idea of the ocean, without ever experiencing it.

Ahead of this trip, I swore to myself that I would go swimming. I stood at the edge of the water, scared. Close up, the ocean wasn’t magical, but terrifying. Or, rather, it was still magical, which made it terrifying. A whole world underneath the surface with currents and riptides that could kill me, sharks waiting for breakfast, brewing underwater storms. I was vacationing on a fucking volcano that was still erupting mere days before I arrived. A place that had too many warning signs in addition to active volcanoes - tsunami evacuation zone, flash floods, falling rocks, high surf, riptides, earthquakes.

Much was happening under my feet, under the sharp rocks and black sand, beneath the water line. None of which I could see. And that’s the spot I picked for swimming in the ocean for the first time. I would have to get in it and feel my way through. Before, I minimized the danger signs of high surf and riptides, not because I’m especially risk-tolerant or irresponsible, but because I had no physical understanding of what it meant to be pulled out into the deep, then thrown back onto the sand by a wave.

I walked in slowly, trying to acclimate to the cool water (this never works, I guess, better to throw yourself in head first). I made it worse by going slowly, goosebumps covering my entire body and my breath catching whenever a wave inched up higher on my sun-warmed skin.

I was never the farthest one out. But I did swim where my feet didn’t reach the ground. It was exhilarating. It was terrifying. I had never been completely surrounded by water that wasn’t calm like the over-chlorinated community pools or the stagnant, murky lakes of my childhood. The ocean was a different animal, breathing and heaving and convulsing. I was incredibly uncomfortable, immersed in a body much more powerful than mine. I felt an acute and intimate lack of control. I couldn’t deny that in a fight with the ocean, there was one inevitable winner. It took work to stay in the water instead of fleeing the feeling of being out of control.

Whenever I saw a wave building, I could feel it sucking me into it, trying to swallow me. I would swim over the wave, then watch it topple and crash into the shore. As the wave receded back into the ocean, I’d try to swim against the current and toward land. Every time, I felt the mass of water trying to pull me out. Once I got the hang of it, it was gorgeous. Sparkling salt water and blue skies overhead, the sun on my face, and Rob laughing next to me. I watched kids play on the sand and teens on boogie boards to either side of me. I had dipped myself into a whole new, enormous liquid body of push and pull, a world on its own. I felt a little bit wild and daring.

And then I turned and looked back at the ocean and saw a wall of water towering over me.

I could’ve ducked under the wave to come out on the other side, but I didn’t. That wave hit me right in the face, pulled me under, knocked me on my ass hard, then flipped me a couple of times before I could figure out up and down. The salty taste, sting, and grit of water and sand clouded my eyes, vision blurry, while I was choking and coughing. I tried to swim back out to that sweet spot where you can float up and over the waves before they turn and crash, but I was right next to all the boogie boarders, and the next wave was already coming for me. Getting rolled by a wave the second time was as disorienting as the first time. And this time, my bikini bottoms were coming off. As I was holding up my bottoms with one hand, the other hand blindly flailing around toward light and air, the water suddenly receded. I staggered out of the surf triumphantly, with my bikini bottoms at least mostly covering my ass crack. The breeze quickly alerted me that mooning people was no longer my only concern.

Have you ever walked out of the grocery store with a flimsy plastic bag about to rip right through the bottom, spilling those two melons you bought? I always put too much faith in those bags, but of course, the melons fell out. All the way.

As I stood there with my sagging bottoms and top slid up under my chin, I didn’t have enough hands to pull all the parts into their proper place. I didn’t even know which direction I was facing or when the next wave would hit me. So I just stood there, salt and sand in my eyes, coughing and cackling like a maniac, screaming apologies into the wind, while another woman (who’d lost her top a few waves before) and Rob were laughing hysterically.

Although I could see the hilarity of it, I was rattled. But I didn’t get out of the water. I stayed. I came back a few days later. I wore a one-piece that time.

I was still worried about the waves. I was scared every time I went in. It may sound silly and small, but swimming in the ocean became a practice of doing exciting things while being scared, of acknowledging my illusions of control, of accepting that rare beauty always has a dangerous edge, of being okay with looking like a fool who didn’t know how to be in the ocean. Because I didn’t. I literally watched local toddlers to learn how they maneuvered the waves without chugging salt water every time.

And even then, the second, fourth, fifth time swimming, I knew I could go in and out with the waves and learn how to navigate their power to not get knocked around so much, but that the ocean would always be unpredictable and potentially dangerous. But then again, nearly everything can be dangerous. Crossing the street, or swimming in the ocean, or loving a person. I’ve spent a lot of time resisting experiences that carry an inherent risk of losing control over myself or a situation. So, I got stuck in the theory instead of living through an experience, just like loving my idea of ‘the ocean.’

Every time since the first, I remembered ocean-savvy dad’s advice and faced the ocean when swimming, not the beach. I watched the waves coming in, so I could decide what to do. I faced the ocean to remind myself that I’m not on safe shores (and that the shores aren’t always safe anyway) and that I need to stay present. And although I experienced what happens when I turn my back on the ocean and get surprised by a powerful wave, I couldn’t quite shake the desire to look away, to refuse acknowledging what was coming. Because if I directly look at it, if I’m immersed in it, I can’t deny that at any moment, I could experience total bliss or get flattened against the rocks. It means I have to give up my theories on how things should be, my illusions of control, and the alternate worlds I create in my head.

I have spent much anxious energy trying to eliminate all risk to make myself feel safe. But I rarely felt safe anyway.

In the ocean, I didn’t feel safe. I felt a wild sense of reckless abandon. At least for a few moments before I looked down to make sure sharks weren’t circling me. It was only in the ocean that I realized how long I’d stood at the shore of my own life, observing, hovering at the water’s edge, only dipping in my toes. I’ve turned my back on the ocean, and on my life. Many times I’ve said that I love or value or desire a certain kind of life or relationship or experience or adventure or challenge, but what I have loved or valued or desired was just the idea of it.

I value both thinking and doing, but I know I heavily skew on the thinking side. This past year, I’ve expended a lot of effort to go from thinking about stuff to doing stuff, whether it’s writing or swimming in the ocean or lifting weights or giving up on managing other people’s emotions. I got a lot of pleasure out of considering ideas, thinking up a beautiful life, and dreaming of places to go and challenges to take on. There is some research somewhere that says our brains love that as much as doing the actual thing. It was perfect for me, because it made my brain feel good without the risk of actually doing the thing.

Doing stuff is hard and awkward, especially doing things with my body I’ve never done before. It’s the good kind of hard, but still hard.

I have a difficult time wrapping my head around the fact that I’ve been saying I want to live by the ocean for decades since I first swam in the ocean at 40 years old. Only once I was in the water did I realize the disconnect. It took the actual experience to understand that I had no clue what the fuck I was talking about, which makes me question:

What else that I proclaim to love and value is based on theory rather than practice?

There are still zero pictures of me in the ocean, but it doesn’t matter, because I have a memory of myself floating - a tiny dot in a deep blue expanse.