Leaving and Finding Home

When I was 18, I moved from Hawai‘i to Palo Alto to attend college. For most of my peers, this whole going away for college stuff seemed to be the best day of their lives. I couldn’t have been further on the opposite end of the spectrum. I was a quiet kid with a history of sleepover homesickness and I had never been away from Hawai‘i for longer than a few weeks. I knew this transition was going to be difficult and as much as I tried to mentally prepare myself in the weeks leading up to my departure, standing in line in security with my head tilted downward to hide the tears in my eyes, I knew things were going to get bad. 

As Division-1 water polo player, I arrived on campus a month before the start of classes in order to begin training for the fall season. Training was hard. Like really fucking hard. But this was a good distraction for the time being. We would practice for about six to seven hours a day for those first two weeks before tapering off a bit. Being an incoming freshman, I appreciated this time to meet my teammates. Perhaps it was the close exposure to one another, or maybe it was the shared chlorinated hell in which we all lived in, but our friendships grew rapidly. By the time the rest of the school arrived on campus in September, I had already made about 20 great friends. Despite this core group of friends, I was having trouble connecting on a series of levels. I was once again feeling homesick and alone. 

One (rare) off day I got a text from an upperclassman teammate who was also a transplant from Hawai‘i. “Surf?” Yes. Of course. We drove to Montara State Beach, just a few miles north of Half Moon Bay. I struggled into my online-bought wetsuit and took my first few steps into the Northern Californian Pacific. The session was freezing and painful. The surf was onshore and grindy. And I left in a strange and confused mood. But it helped me in ways that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Something felt right, despite everything also feeling wrong. So I kept going back, again and again. I’ve continued to surf up and down the bay area for the past seven years.

Reflecting back on this transitional period of my life, I can’t help but credit my sanity to surfing, the ocean and the waves helping me adapt, grow up, and piece together a new home. 

Surfing in San Francisco was a method that I used to adapt to this new world that I was now a part of. Time moves quicker in California than in Hawai‘i and if you blink you might just get left behind. Outside of the ocean, I was getting left behind in a lot of ways. My water polo friends were making new friends and classes were ramping up. But surfing provided me with a community within my own community. A community of water goers willing to drop everything, stuff some boards on the rack of the car, and head to the beach. I formed a new web of friendships with people who understood and shared my oceanic obsession. It shrunk down my world to something that I was more comfortable with and could look forward to. It was the bridge between Hawai‘i and California that I needed to get my feet back under me. 

If there was ever a perfect analogy for moving from my life-long home in Hawai‘i to San Francisco bay, it would be the surf. The grey waves, unforgiving water temperatures, the inconsistent wind conditions. Life at home, with my parents looking after me, came easy. Life here was far from it. 

At first it was frustrating surfing around the bay. I would hardly ever score, I couldn’t judge the conditions, and I refused to buy booties because I hated the way they felt under my feet and on top of my board. I was angry that it took so much effort to do something I truly loved. Especially when it was something that I used to be able to do on a whim. Thankfully, this mindset slowly changed. Looking back on it, my mindset had to change. I was living in this toxic bubble of self-induced loneliness which stemmed from my inability to recognize that most beautiful things in life don’t come easy, and oftentimes don’t even come at all. I was a jaded 19-year old used to perfect year-round waves and even better weather. 

But then I bought booties (and a wetty with a hood) and my life was perfect once again. Just kidding. But it was a damn good start. The more I drove to the beach, the more I fell in love with the 280 freeway that traces the edge of the San Mateo mountains and skyline boulevard that creeps up and over towards the sea. I embraced the fact that a 1.5 hour session would take up 4 hours of my day. Life up here allowed me to begin to appreciate the process of surfing as a whole, rather than the quick dopamine rush that comes with a single wave.

More importantly, this thought process extended inland into my daily life as well. Surfing Ocean Beach, Montara, Half Moon Bay, and Santa Cruz me to shift away from my childish worldview of instant gratification. I was becoming more journey oriented and a little less afraid of adversity. It’s not always warm water and perfect waves. These were small steps in beginning to take responsibility for my life and my mental health.  

When thrown head-first into young adult life on the mainland, surfing is what pieced together a new home. For so long I had convinced myself that California could never be home. And this really hurt me for the first few years. I refused to accept anything but Hawai‘i, and because of this, I lived half in the bay area and half on O‘ahu, neither here nor there, floating through each day like a ghost longing for something else. 

The ocean, the coastline, the waves– surfing, and the community enveloped within it, welcomed me with open arms. The more I surfed, I watched the ocean, hung out with friends in the water, the more I built up that feeling of acceptance and that sense of home. I didn’t have to be an outsider wherever I went. And while my nostalgia for the days growing up on O‘ahu never passed, my excitement to dig my toes into the San Francisco bay grew and grew within me, allowing me to bounce back and forth, like a rising and falling tide, with ease. Without surfing I don’t think I could have survived that transition. Because of surfing I’ve found a community, I’ve grown up a bit, and I can call another home, home.