For the past three months, I have been on a new surfboard. This is very exciting for two reasons. The first, the more superficial but also fun, is that the people you surf with frequently will always notice when you have a shiny new toy and ask you about it, and then you get to gush and nerd out over its particulars together in the way only people who are deeply involved in a niche thing can. And the second is in the discovery that toy yields as you learn how to wield it.
I’ve likened getting a new surfboard, in my own mind, to something like playing a new video game in a long-running and beloved franchise. All the basics are the same, but there are subtle nuanced differences that make its experience all new, and that take some water-time, like game play, to suss out. The first several sessions on a new board will be spent doing so, feeling the way it responds to the wave and under your feet, learning its tics to turn your own tricks.
This new board of mine was my brother Matt’s, a tiny 5’6” thruster from a trusted California shaper, Xanadu, whom he’s been buying sticks from for years. Black on the bottom and rails with an acid-yellow/green center, it looks as fast as it is. He had taken it out when visiting me in Ocean City in mid-April, the two of us making the best of some onshore but decently fun swell, and during one of the sessions, he urged me to try it over the twin-fin I’d been riding all year. I balked, as is my wont when someone tells me what to do when surfing, but then aquiesed, because I know that I don’t know everything, especially about surfing, which Matt knows far more about than I do.
“This is the board you should be riding,” he said. “It’ll move the way you want. It’s too small for me, but it’s perfect for you.”
I thought it was too small in general, but he was right. I took this light-as-a-potato-chip board out and, despite doubts when I started paddling and felt it sink under the water beneath me, had a fucking blast. My first takeoff was easy and smooth, my pop-up stuck like glue, and when I went up for a frontside snap, it felt like whipping through liquid mercury, the lip of the wave an upright slide for me to launch off. The whole session went this way, all rides playful surprises. Every time I’ve gone smaller with a board, I’ve felt freed, like the moves my body has yearned to complete faster or harder are suddenly unlocked—this surfer-girl character leveling up. Normally there’s a steeper learning curve than one session, but this board and I fit from the get-go.
Matt went back to California but the board stayed with me, and after a few weeks, I thought it might have been the best board for me I’d ever ridden. I said as much to my friend Lysh one morning late-May when we actually had some decent waves (it was an awfully flat and slow spring).
“I just… trust it,” I said to her.
“You trust it?” she asked.
“Yeah. Like… it’s got me.” And I meant that. I trusted that this flimsy board would hold me, respond instinctively to my motions, let me crank a backside snap or bound over the whitewater on a floater and stay standing.
But as I paddled away, towards a left peak I’d been eyeing, a little internal thought surfaced: Is it that you trust the board? Or do you just trust yourself?
Oooh, my brain said.
Let’s get into that.
My best friend in New York used to have a verbal tick. “Trust and believe,” she’d say right before telling me something with utter certainty. As in: you know this to be true.
It’s immensely cliché to say one has “trust issues.” Don’t we all? Isn’t trust one of the most hard-won feelings in the world? And yet here I am, reader, saying it to you. Mine, historically, arose around romantic relationship. Blame all those men of the past who broke my poor, wide-open heart over and over. It takes a long time for me to feel secure in love, and when I do, that it won’t cut and run. But I’ve also realized over the past few years that this misgiving isn’t unique to romantic love. That it’s hard for me to feel secure in anything. A side-effect of the abrupt loss of my mother; I live with an implacable sense that nothing gold can stay. Everything in existence feels deeply impermanent to me, so much so that even in the most wonderful moments of my life, I’m touched by a fleeting sadness anchored in the godforsaken surety that this, too, can go away.
In the past few months, I have been considering this word, trust, a lot. Lysh’s remark was another impetus, but so was a budding relationship. On long walks, I mulled over what it really is; how I’d define it absent a dictionary. An expectation. That the object (thing, person) will do what it is supposed to do, without fail; show up, perform, deliver. It’s placing faith outside yourself, relinquishing control, and believing fully that the object will make good on what you seek. Something, I acknowledged, I am not very good at. Trust is a promise, unspoken yet upheld.
I did alright; Merriam-Webster defines trust, the noun, as “the firm belief in the integrity, ability, effectiveness, or genuineness of someone or something”; and the verb, “to give a task, duty, or responsibility to / to put (something) into the possession or safekeeping of another.” Synonyms: (n) as in confidence; (v) as in to hand, to believe.
Confidence. I perked up. I like that.
We’re used to talking about confidence as a personality trait, the one we hope to have that means we’re sure of ourselves and our abilities. But the secondary meaning is my preferred: “free from doubt.” A certainty of conviction. This is the kind of trust people place, or talk about placing, in a higher power or a revered figure more often than themselves. I think about C.S. Lewis writing about his faith in A Grief Observed on how the pain of losing his beloved wife made him question the presence and benevolence of God, and yet it he still felt in no danger of becoming a non-believer. He did not understand how any God can let horrible things happen, and yet he still trusted that there was something out there, guiding his and our paths. This is the kind of faith my mother had; the kind I, agnostic, have lately put into a surfboard instead. A stick seems easier not to doubt than a person.
It’s immensely hard to engender trust, in people or the world or ourselves. There are simply so many dangers—to our bodies, hearts, minds—that our primitive brain is over-attuned to. (It’s one of the reasons we create faith systems. There has to be something we can look to whole-heartedly. There isn’t? Make one up.) How can we ever give up our self-protection and hand it off to someone else?
As a youth, I was a very trusting person. One might say naive. I love these traits of mine; they have allowed me to feel my way through life, even though those feelings were often painful. But while hurts can be helpful, and I don’t regret experiencing most of the ones I have, they took their toll. Many people have let me down; I’m sure this is the case for you, too. And so, as an adult (outside of and before my time in the water) absent a higher power dogma, I wised up. Began to dole out trust more sparingly. Decided not to depend on other people as much. A few friends, perhaps; my mother and brother. Others were wild cards. Too risky. Instead, I put faith in my own hand. This seemed more reliable. Safer. Secure. Because if I had one thing, I had my dogged ability to get back up and keep going after those hurts. I didn’t always make the right decisions for myself, but I tried, and that (I thought) was more than many had or could give me. When the cruelty of my mother’s death sharpened this disenchantment further, I doubled down. Who else but me?
Until recently, I didn’t think this belief was all that bad. By existing as though anything can be taken or flee from me at any time, I expect nothing, and am therefore less often disappointed; you can’t be let down if you don’t get your hopes up, right? This was realistic of me, I thought; perhaps pessimistic, but not harmfully so. Isn’t it good to depend on yourself? I hadn’t considered how hard placing zero trust in anything or anyone outside of myself was making my day-to-day, or how heavy putting the burdens of achievement and fulfillment only on my shoulders was. It was self-reliance as shield, insulating me from the fear of lack of control, or worse, hurt. I saw it as strength, missing that it was actually spider-cracked with weakening doubt. I have always worked—at my ambitions, my sports, myself. Only recently have I asked myself why.
For the sake of continuity. Because I could. Things may not always have worked out but, I thought, at least I kept going. By never stopping, I could keep disappointments at bay.
This is, of course, a falsity.
Emerson famously wrote to “trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” I have had no problem trusting my ability to get shit done. But that those abilities will lead somewhere? Ah. Another story. Entirely.
Trust … is different from mere reliance,” wrote philosopher Martha Nussbaum. “One may rely on an alarm clock, and to that extent be disappointed if it fails to do its job, but one does not feel deeply vulnerable, or profoundly invaded by the failure… Trust, by contrast, involves opening oneself to the possibility of betrayal, hence to a very deep form of harm. It means relaxing the self-protective strategies with which we usually go through life, attaching great importance to actions by the other over which one has little control. It means, then, living with a certain degree of helplessness.”
Control freaks like myself do not love to submit to helplessness. Will, in fact, do anything to avoid that state. Which is why I taught myself to be so self-reliant. Largely how I learned to do that was by surfing—standing up on a board to stand through life, etc. As the practice helped me gain further control over my independence, as well as take comfort in it, the boards I rode became linked to that security. By the time I was thrust by my brother onto a board light enough to wield easily in one hand, this lightning-bolt Xanadu, I had the basic (and then some) skills to leap to my feet and have said board hold me. And it did. It’s no wonder I could more easily say I love a surfboard than a person. But that isn’t trust. That’s reliance.
Over my spring sessions, every single time I popped-up on the Xanadu, there it was, barely two pounds yet holding nearly 60 times its weight in me. I rarely missed on this board, was feeling like a more nimble and capable surfer than I’d ever been, and began to think it magic. At last, I’d found my dream ride. No matter how choppy or weak the waves were—which they had been, this mediocre-at-best spring season—it was there. I could take off looking way down the line and know without a shadow of a doubt that my feet would meet waxed fiberglass and stay there. I got you, it seemed to say, with more conviction than any partner had before.
It wasn’t until that remark to Lysh that I realized I had been, perhaps, giving it too much credit. Yes, it’s a great board. Well-shaped, with edgy rails that grip the face of the wave, a swallow tail to open me up for sweeping cutbacks and snaps that crack like a sassy teen’s chewing gum. But the ability to execute those moves? That’s all mine.
Over the winter, I’d been practicing my pop-up with ankle weights on, noting my foot placement and making myself go again and again until I could get them facing just right every time; done increasingly more-intense squat series to strengthen my hips to make heavy drops and hold lower in a barrel; hit the rowing machine in flat spells to keep my paddling muscles in peak shape. When there was a serious swell, I went out in the heaviest spots, teaching myself to read and attempt to make challenging waves. From this, I had one of my most unforgettable rides of my career, and certainly my biggest, in early March, a well-overhead right that I got into so quickly I finally, at last, understood what it was like when I saw videos of pros riding all the way down a wave much taller than them. I was not plunging from the takeoff to hail-Mary slam a drop, but gliding down that wave’s face, so tall and long I got to experience it’s full height, examine the sleek moss-green curving face arcing up before and behind me, and be ecstatic in the true sense of the word; I paddled back out after thinking, I just saw the face of god. It’s in a wave.
I told Lysh that I trusted this new board because I was still equating progress with the gear. I was overlooking the most important part: That you earn the gear. That the board would not have felt like magic if I didn’t have the ability to wield it. That I worked, hard, to get myself to a place where that flimsy hotrod thruster felt rock-solid underfoot.
I saw, in the water, that the trust issue I most need to overcome is not in my ability to love. Not in the least because, as I was falling for that board, I was also, separately, falling for a person. (Which is not what this essay is about, though it’s a useful note, and one I can’t leave out.)
No. My biggest issue was my ability to believe. In the effort. In an eventual payoff. In myself. That anything I do will have any effect at all.
I have always worked hard. And yet I am still, constantly, surprised when the work works.
“Have faith in yourself, so you can stand beside whatever it is you have done and fight for it,” said the poet Seamus Heany, “because if you can invest it with that faith, then it has its own truth, its own honesty, its own resilient vulnerability, and hence its own value.”
At the beginning of each year, I set small mottos to live by. This year, I had a set of four:
“Check the ego.
Do the work.
Live simply.
Stay true.”
The first was the most important—over the past four years, I’ve done a lot of internal self-analysis in an attempt to release my ego—but really, they are intertwined. Combined, they mean just live in the right way, get your shit done and don’t be overconfident about it, what you have and what you do and who you are is enough. Don’t forget that.
Realizing that I had done the work of learning to surf a very small board well was not comfortable, for me. Because it felt egotistical. Like I saw myself as hotshot as the board looked. And I cannot emphasize enough that I do not; I may have gotten pretty decent at surfing over the past three years, but I’m keenly aware of my limitations. The boards you ride, like anything we purchase, say something about you and your style of surfing. I was and am aware of the implications of this Xanadu; throwing it under my arm and walking down the sand during a good swell day when other surfers are out, I know its tiny pointed nose and logo smart of the maschismo that originally turned me off of surfing as a teen. There was doubt rubbed on with the wax; did I deserve to wield this board? Was I worthy enough? I’d ask myself, even while coming out of the water having just ridden it. This is true of my writing, when I’m surprised that people like it even though I’ve been at it for years; of my business, which I poured my whole self into yet am always chagrined by praise of. I am constantly telling myself that I’ve put in the work, and that it’s worked. That I am doing enough.
As spring became summer, the waves have mellowed. It is the season of knee-high waves and longer boards. And so out from the garage came my mid-length, the cherry-red custom Ashton that was my first real board. I so rarely ride her anymore; at 7’6”, she’s two feet longer than what I’m used to now, and paddling her feels a little like lying on a canoe. But I know enough now to see when my little boards won’t be as much fun in slow small waves. In the early weeks of June, the Ashton delivered what the hotshot Xanadu couldn’t: hundred-yard rides out at Assateague or Indian River Inlet, cruising from way outside all the way to the beach. Rides that may not show me the face of an oceanic god, but do remind me why I surf: Joy. Ever-present in the gentle roll down a watery length of unbroken energy.
As I bobbed on that board during a recent early morning session, an hour’s worth of easy waves under my wetsuit, I considered how sure I felt on it. How well my body knows it. How much I rely it. When I go for a wave, I have not an ounce of doubt about its solidity, there and ready to catch me. I patted it softly after one lovely right, when I arced slowly up and down the thigh-high face of gorgeously green water. And I caught myself as I did. Once again, I was thanking the board for that ride. But I taught myself to be able to do so. It feels so comfortable, so familiar, so like it’s got me because it was the impetus to developing all my more intermediate skills as a surfer; riding first hurricanes, making a stand-up barrel. But again: It was, is, a tool to unlocking my potential. I can ride the Xanadu now because first, I taught myself to maneuver this. I can trust the board, any board, but I also need to believe in myself.
The payoff in recognizing this goes deeper than surfing. It’s giving myself some credit, and from that, the ability to construct a value system on which I can learn to put trust elsewhere. Crucially in others. Helplessness is frightening, but if we never surrender to anything or anyone outside ourselves, we will be muted to the glory that openness to the world allows. Stuck in a half-life bubble of our own creation. Stay true, I told myself. I have always been open, with my heart and mind. To live truthfully, to honor the person I want to be, I had to remember that my self-protection was killing that beautiful part of me.
Sure, I’m good at working hard. But the capacity for work is just that, capacity. You can’t believe in a skillset. Faith is “a belief not based on proof”; its synonyms are confidence and trust. All of this is linked. It’s okay to believe in yourself, even if you think you lack something to hang it on. Even if you don’t think the work is working. We’re often the hardest on ourselves; you’re probably accomplishing more than you allow yourself to acknowledge. Dig down—there is something inside of you that you can pull out as evidence for: hey, I got this. I can do it. And when you do, you’ll realize that if you have put in that sweet effort of learning to know yourself, trust yourself, it will be all the easier to relinquish that iron grip on control. To surrender to the helplessness of existence amongst other humans, which is so beautiful, and makes us part of the humming whole, knowing that if your gut says they got you, then they probably do. Of course, you might be wrong. You might experience hurt, loss, grief. But that’s the catch of living fully. The chance we take to get the most out of this brief life.
It is perhaps no coincidence that as soon as I saw that it was me I needed to (and ultimately did) trust, I was able to do so in the area that I’d most struggled in. Love. It’s true what they say: You can’t give it to others until you have it for yourself. And what is trust, really, but the deepest expression of love?
Lately I have been working on getting into waves earlier, popping up and immediately starting to work the wave. As I did so seamlessly last week while riding my Xanadu, I had such a rush of disbelief. There had been no conscious thought, just reaction; my instincts said “we’re going to take off high, pump fast, and skirt that closeout” and my body replied, using the board perfectly, minutely working it to eek around some whitewater and to the sexy open face on the other side where I snapped, and smiled. As I paddled back out, surprise turned to pride. I had asked my body to meet me somewhere, and it did. Once again, it wasn’t the board. It was me.
I rely on my surfboards. But I trust myself. And in accepting that, I’ve been able to say that I trust another person, too. With my heart—the scariest hand-off of all. But that kind of vulnerability is, as Heany said, resistant, and thus with its own value. It shows growth beyond the fears that have kept me shielding myself with self-reliance for 2.5 years now. Was I scared to cede myself to this person? Absolutely. But my susceptability to love was the last part of me I had yet to reclaim after the losses of the last few years. I am stronger for being romantically unguarded; for relaxing into the yes of love. And it is another boon to know I have confidence in my self-work, and believe that it’s steered me true. To a person as good- and open-hearted as myself. In the end, every kind of work we do is a merely tool to get us to that: Living with terrific, trembling receptiveness to the deepest, most gorgeously terrifying emotions.
No matter how much confidence we have, we will always get things wrong. I’m going to misstep, on a board or land. I’m going to choose wrong, somewhere, somehow, again. I’m going to open up and be hurt. But that is life, and I believe truly that I’m better at making sure those things don’t happen than I used to be. That’s all we can ask of ourselves. To go, as Emerson said, “confidently in the direction of our dreams.” To check the ego, and do the work. And then be able to live simply, and stay true.
We will always be seeking to know ourselves. But if we can learn, first, foremost, and forever, to trust ourselves, we will make that journey just a little less fraught, and so much lighter too. It’s good to believe. To take yourself in hand and say: Hey. I got you.
The ultimate expression of love. For you, to you, above all.