So, I took a great bike ride with Oren the other day. We went and rode along Ocean Beach I often look to the water and long to go in. But I know better. It's not time yet. I have a healthy respect for the ocean -- especially this one, where the tides can grab you with great force and pull you under before you know what's happening. I tell people the closest I ever came to dying was at Ocean Beach. I had just gotten my wetsuit, a gift from my girlfriend, and was getting used to the idea that I could go into the Ocean in Northern California. Having grown up in Southern California, I lived to go to the beach. But even Newport, with waves that often hit 8 and 10 feet, was nothing compared to the much colder and much fiercer Pacific of the Northern California Coast. Anyhow, I was an avid bodysurfer then. Didn't really like boogie boarding. Didn't like having something tied to me. Didn't like to have something between me and the water. There's something very zen about body surfing. It's just you and the wave. Hell,I didn't even like the wetsuit, but with temperatures hovering in the 40s, it was necessary. But there's a reason you don't see many body surfers here. It's too hard. So I ventured in the water. This was maybe ten years ago.
It was a cold San Francisco morning. Summer and foggy. Like that's unusual. There was a fisherman on the beach and I could see a few surfers off in the distance, little black dots set against the steel of the sky and ocean. Within a few feet of entering the water, I knew I had misjudged. I was in over my head. The waves, albeit smallish (only a few feet) were crashing every few seconds, forming beautiful tubes that felt like lead blankets dropped recklessly from above. I was ducking every one. But the pull under the water was just as strong. Like someone was grabbing my legs and trying to wrench them toward the deeper water. I was getting tired. Fast. My breath was hard and I felt my lungs expand and hurt like they used to as a kid playing backyard baseball on a smoggy LA day. I looked out for the surfers and the fisherman. They were too far away. They probably didn't even know I was in the water. And I knew right then I had made a bad mistake. I had been too cocky, too naive. I didn't know this ocean. Not like I know it now. I didn't know about the millions of gallons that poured from the mouth of the Golden Gate Bridge just around the bend, or the underwater mountainous terrain. And yes, I didn't know my own skill level. The thing about surfing (and I include bodyboarding and bodysurfing in this) is that you have to know your limits. You have to know with realistic precision, just how good you are; just how much you can take. Yes, you want to challenge yourself. It's part of the fun. But if you misjudge yourself or the ocean, you can pay a price. And the price I could pay was my own death. Yeah, maybe I'm all drama (as my friend Teena likes to say). But I'm telling you, this is how people drown. This is how people die. They struggle. They fight. They get tired. They think they can win. They act on instinct and fear. But the ocean is too big, too fierce, too relentless. It always wins. It's not personal. The ocean just does what it does. And if you fight it, you lose. You get tired. A wave comes that you can't fight and it pulls you under. Or out. Sounds like some kind of bad cliche, I know. But that's the way it is. People die at Ocean Beach. I wrote about one summer where seven people died, making it the deadliest beach in the world. It's lessons like this that make me love the ocean. It's taught me a lot. At this moment, it was teaching me humility. And it was forcing me to be sane in the middle of my insanity. CALM DOWN, I told myself. It was a matter of life and death. Be calm. STOP FIGHTING. So I did. I did the ragdoll thing that I had learned to do as a kid at Newport and Santa Monica beaches. When the wave has you under, go limp. Don't fight. Surfers call it going Zen. Let myself be tossed by the waves. I knew if I could bring my head up to gulp some air I'd be OK. I was afraid. I tried to slow my heart down. Slow my breath.
And I kept thinking one thought: I don't want to die.
I had always thought that in the moment before death, should you know what is happening, you would think big thoughts. Profound thoughts about all the things you wished you'd done and all the things you wished you hadn't. You'd think about your parents and your kids and your lovers and friends. Maybe you'd think about your pets or places you loved. Whatever was important to you. But I realized in that moment, that if I died right then and there, I'd die thinking this: I don't want to die. Sometimes it takes facing death to make you realize how much you want to live. When I'm down I sometimes return to that moment. There was no part of me, not one little iota of me, that wanted to die, that wanted to end it. I have an intense and strong will to live -- and to live well. Sometimes I hide it. But I know it's there.
Obviously, I made it out. And yes, to those of you who know I'm prone to a little bit of drama, I probably wasn't in as much danger as I thought I was. But that doesn't matter.
I was talking to a friend the other night. I've fought with depression some during my life. Sometimes it seems like this demon hovering over my shoulder, this dark presence that threatens to swallow me when times get rough. So far it hasn't. But you know, I haven't always been sure I could escape it. If there was ever time to fall into a depression, it could have happened this time. This surgery. Maybe that's why this ocean story is hitting me. I hadn't planned on writing about this but sometimes the words come out and I figure out why later. Now I think I know why. This surgery has been a lot like that experience. Bigger than me. And threatening. And scary. But the difference is that this time when I was panicking under the water, I wasn't alone. I've had all of you out there pulling me out, pulling me through. I know this sounds sappy. I'm not usually so corny (despite my name). But it's true. When I first started this blog, I had the faintest of ideas that it would become popular -- maybe a few thousand, maybe more. Maybe strangers would come and read it because they were interested in knee replacement surgeries. But as it's gone on, I've seen that my readers are exactly who they should be; people who know me; people who care. And that feels like it should be. I'm still in it. I'm still wet and cold and scared (to use the ocean analogy). But I feel like I'm finally climbing out of the water, breathless and shaking, but realizing that I'm going to make it. That I'm full of life and happy to be here. And I'm going to get through this.
Anyhow, this is not at all what I set out to write. I was going to talk about how I've stayed in bed the last 24 hours with some kind of stomach thing -- maybe even a reaction to the water and bike ride the other day. But I realize this was what I needed to say. Maybe it's a little more personal, a little rougher, than I usually get. But so be it. I'll get to the other stuff later.
PS I took this picture years ago of a small rock at the beach
