Why is it that the 20s can feel more tumultuous than the high school years? I thought the days of feeling like the world was coming to an end had hit its peak when my first love broke up with me at the beach. I spent the next months feeling inadequate, unwanted, and insecure. But the post college years thus far have revealed themselves otherwise. I feel like I’m trying to ride a wave to dry land. I’m paddling, paddling; positioning myself for the right wave to attempt. Waiting patiently, but swimming around, always on the lookout for the perfect crush. Then in the distant, there it is. A slow mound powered by the moon is gaining momentum on the horizon. The feeling of “just go for it” pushes my body to position itself. Then go time comes, and the rising sounds of the ocean make my arms instinctively try to propel the board, and ultimately my body to shoot ahead.
Something isn’t quite right, proportionately. I think it’s the lack of any muscle in my arms. I haven’t been able catch a wave and stand up. In a faded scrapbook, the picture of me doing it in Maui in the 6th grade is but an irretrievable sense memory. Right now, waves are knocking my face left and right, and eventually one side sweeps me like a bitch slap and I fall off the board completely, swallowing salt water with the fall.
I still have a long way to go before I can surf.
