On the way up

It's already Tuesday? Sheesh, I'm still trying to digest last weekend! It was a real rollercoaster of emotions. My life is usually pretty drama free, so processing is taking some time. I'll start with Friday morning, and go from there. Here goes:

Friday morning one of my friends called to see if I wanted to go surfing later. I immediately declined. Fear is a powerful enemy. As soon as she asked me, I could feel my heart racing. I think it was actually fear that responded to her, not my voice.

But as I hung up the phone, I began to realize that fear was stopping me from living a fun, spontaneous life. Even though I live with my boys who are avid surfers, and I have a bunch of friends who surf, I never really learned how. And the few times that I've attempted have brought me such panic, it's almost palpable. It doesn't make sense, really. I'm pretty comfortable in the ocean and love to swim and snorkel, but put a surf board into the equation, and my knees go weak, my heart beats like machine gun fire, and I get a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I called her right back, and told her that it was the fear talking, not me, and that yes, I did want to go. Hooray for me! Fear was not going to stop me, well, this time anyway.

Doheny State Beach has a pretty forgiving wave, so we drove down and hopped in the water there. Once I mustered up the courage to paddle out, it was amazing! The sun was out, pelicans flew past, and the water was pretty warm. It made me feel alive!

I looked exactly like this, right?

I paddled past the wave break to get acclimated, and sat out there for a long time trying to figure out what the heck to do next. I paddled for a couple of waves, but came up empty handed. After about an hour of really loving being out in the water, and trying to get a couple of waves, it was time to leave. I was in good position on the inside, closer to the shore. A wave was coming, and I could tell that I could maybe get this one! Heart pounding, paddling as hard as I could, I went for it! I could feel the wave pick me up! I was on! I rode it in on my stomach, because I haven't yet figured out how to get up  on my feet, but it was so much fun! Yea, I looked like a dork, but the cool thing was, I didn't even care.

A beautiful day at Doheny

My afternoon ended on a high, I had caught a wave! Ok, it wasn't pretty, but I did catch one! I was all smiles. There is such childlike playfulness to surfing, it is so exciting to be pushed by a wave. And I had somewhat tamed that awful fear. Things were going amazingly well.

I'm going to leave at that for now. I've got to run, but I'll finish telling you about the weekend rollercoaster ride later.  Bye for now.