Surfing: Rocked like a Rolling Stone

At work, someone was talking about 'panicking.'  The discussion had nothing to do with surfing, but I said, "Getting trapped under water taught me not to panic."  My fellow conversers looked at me funny.  I just smiled.  How implausible, if not completely mistaken, they must have assumed that idea.Alas, it's true.  I'm one of those surfers who will have more scars on my body than pristine spots of skin upon my death.  I maim myself and come close to doing so with a comfortable regularity.  When you surf waves of size and power, and definitely both, and you submerge near (especially in front of) the wave, you will most decidedly feel the size and power of Mother Ocean."Rocked like a rolling stone" is an expression I made up as it was happening to me one time.  I like the musical reference and, literally, it feels like that.  Already under water, the wave pulls you farther down, picks you up and hurls you forward.  You thrash and roll until Mother is done with you and leaves you to scramble to the surface desperate for oxygen.  This is not a scribe's exaggeration--this is what happens.  (For anyone that's never experienced this and doesn't particularly take to the musical analogy, imagine you're caught in a horizontal tornado.)Not surprisingly, this complete loss of control and diminishing supply of life's breath causes what we refer to, in technical terms, as panic.  In the beginning, I used to fight it furiously.  A wave would come, I'd duck dive, it'd snag me, whip my board ouf ot my grips and I'd call all appendages and strength to battle.  I think it was a Star Wars movie that said it best:  Resistance is futile.  It was.  And just so you don't think I'm simply a control freak, the impetus is survival.  People drown this way.  When you hear of people drowning in the big waves, this is how they die.  They don't make it to the surface to suck in O2 before the next wave comes along.  I'm making humor out of the situation but there is a fatal potential here.  And this is what you think of on big days.  Trapped under water, I imagine the headline (because, of course, my death will merit big bold print in my hometown's newspaper):  Girl drowns surfing.  I see my parents' reaction to the news.  Not pretty.  And I always feel that consuming fear electrify my whole body violently needing to swim to the surface.Now since I'm also not an adrenaline junkie or a masochist, why, you might ask (because I know I did), would I keep going back into the water on monster days just to be the ocean's rag doll?  Well, as with any good story, there was a climactic turning point.One double-overhead (10'-12') day, I found myself in the unfortunate area called the impact zone at the beginning of a set.  That meant that I was going underwater a lot and the Rolling Stones were doing way too many encores.  The inhalations of oxygen between waves were insufficient and my body was tiring--combine that with my 360 degree sea dance and the stage was set for disorientation.  During my fourth or fifth beating, I got mad and started grabbing water and throwing it back as I kicked with every muscle in my legs and that's when I felt it.  The water was getting colder and, even with my eyes closed I could tell, it was getting darker.  My entire being seared with the terrifying realization:  I was paddling away from oxygen.  That day I almost didn't make it to the surface because of my own ignorant fighting.  That palpable event and some fortuitous timing of a physics lesson helped me ditch my pugilist ways to become an aquatic pacifist.It was in an oceanography class that I came to see a wave differently and discovered that it was not my nemesis (we'll come to who it actually was in a moment.)  Drawing a cross section of the ocean, I pictured the wave physically.  You see, a wave rarely moves an atom of water horizontally in the ocean.  It moves up and down, a motion created by the energy that traverses shoreward.  When I saw the diagram in my textbook, I visualized myself as that red indicating dot and realized that if I just did nothing (read: don't fight it), the energy would pass and I would rise to the top.  Sounds blatantly obvious, but that was quite a calming epiphany for me.  The ocean wasn't going to hold me down forever.  I just had to cradle my noggin and wait it out.  (The whole bracing-the-head maneuver comes from previous benthic cranial slamming.  I have done more gymnastics underwater than I ever have my entire life above sealevel.)  This was huge for me.  I now had a new visual to replace the drowning headlines.  In those tumultuous moments, I would imagine I was a little red dot.My hypothesis set in place mentally, I experimented.  Because habits are hard to break, stupid ones more so, I resisted the 'go-with-the-flow' idea at first.  But then I began a marine mantra:  Relax.  Just saying the word made me do it, slowly, softly, it worked.  More than once.  Then after a while, every time I found myself clutched in Mother Ocean's grasp, I just wrapped my arms around my head, tucked my knees to my chest and, in a modified fetal position, listened for the immortal words of Frankie Goes to Hollywood that would dutifully come:  Relax.  Don't do it.  I couldn't believe it.  The Red-Dot Theory worked.But since this is real life and not a tidy movie ending, I can tell you that the fear didn't go away.  Every once in a while, I am under water longer than I like.  Every once in a while, I gasp for air.  Every once in a while, I feel the dread.  But it's different now.  Because while the ocean is still bigger and stronger and will win every contest she wants to have with me, I trust her.  I know that she is not my adversary, never was.  (In fact, she even tries to help me if I let her, as she buoys me upward after her waves pass me by.)  No, instead my powerful foe was much closer to me:  fear--and I fed it by panicking.  But now when it comes a-hauntin', there's a voice in my head that says, "That's just the panic.  It's okay.  Relax."  And then I do.  Usually.The 'don't panic' cliche means something viscerally to me now.  It took something as mighty as the ocean to teach me that the feat is not abolishing the fear or the situation that causes it.  Instead, I believe the grand secret is learning to live beyond the fear.