Reinvent the Wheel by Megan McNealy

Author:Megan McNealy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2019-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

Spoke 10

Speak Your Truth:

Just Deliver It with Grace

“Speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.”1

—Oprah Winfrey, 2018 Golden Globes

FEAR OF WAVES

When I was in my early twenties, I almost drowned in the ocean off the coast of San Diego. Having grown up in the midst of cornfields, I had very little exposure to the ocean, so when I was newly situated in California, it was an opportunity to try something new. My boyfriend at the time, who was teaching windsurfing at the Mission Bay Aquatic Center, was an absolute natural in the ocean. On a beautiful Saturday morning, he outfitted us with shortie wetsuits and boogie boards, gave me some basic instructions, and added some lighthearted encouragement. Then we jumped into the waves together.

The power of the water and waves overwhelmed, knocked, tossed, and unexpectedly disoriented me. In what seemed like only a few minutes, a riptide pulled me way out. Suddenly, the sounds of beach laughter were replaced with absolute, eerie silence.

I was completely alone and surrounded by such huge swells on all sides of me that I couldn’t even see which way the shore was. Although a decent swimmer, I had no idea which way to swim, so I started treading water. Without a life jacket, and somehow without my boogie board, I absolutely panicked, my heart crushing in fear that I might die out there.

I bobbed out there alone, time moving painfully slow, with my senses as sharp as a razor, and with my arms and legs exhausted and burning to stay afloat. In one of the most unexpected moments of my entire life, from underneath the water, a black-haired boy, about eight years old, bobbed up like a cork and appeared next to me, bare-chested, with no wetsuit (which is odd in Pacific Ocean water that cold). In his right hand, he brought forth my boogie board. He simply said, “Here you go!” and he gave it to me. And then, I swear to God, he vanished. He didn’t swim away, he just vanished into thin air. To this day I believe he was an angel that saved my life.

That day also imprinted in me a deep fear for the ocean, and especially waves.

Fast forward to 13 years later, when I was living in the Bay Area. My husband (a different but similarly adventurous man) decided to take up sailing on the San Francisco Bay, one of the most technically difficult places in the world to sail because of the winds, which can be serene one hour and screaming at gale force the next. As the (very true) saying goes, “If you can sail in San Francisco, you can sail anywhere in the world.”2

After he literally sailed through his beginning to advanced courses, he encouraged me to take up sailing too. He wanted us to have something new to do together, and as any new parents know, you are grasping for non-baby-related things at that point in your life.

Now I need to pause here to admit that although he had heard my ocean story, I had diminished the harrowing aspect.

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