So I've been taking beginning sailing lessons over the past two weeks. I've really enjoyed them and last Friday decided to take my wife out on a boat during "Family Night" at the sailing club. My wife has sailed before and she's the one who got me the lessons as a Christmas present. The boats we are learning on are two-passenger, fourteen footers.
We were out on the water and things were going well. The wind was up and we were moving along pretty well. I had turned the rudder to face the boat downwind and put the sail out to ninety degrees to catch the wind. I looked back to check to see if the rudder was positioned right [foreshadow] and when I was looking back up WHAM--The boom had come across quickly with a change of wind direction and smacked me right in the face. I was thrown out of the boat as it, in turn capsized.
Luckily, the sailing club has some really great and capable people. Before long some of them came out in an outboard and helped us out. They towed the boat back to the dock and made sure we were alright. My wife is a great sport. She was unharmed and acting very sensibly. I was doing ok as well. Except for a bit of a gash right above my left eye.
Off we went to change clothes and pay a visit to the ER to get a few (3) stitches. The whole scene unfolded in a calm and safe environment. I was never particularly freaked out, except perhaps when I looked in the mirror and saw the vivid color and ghoulish quality of the wound.
But it was very interesting to watch where my thinking and mood went over the next few days. See, this is not the first time I have gone into the drink while in a boat. It has happened three times before, which turns out to be a pretty high proportion of the times that I've been a "skipper" of a boat. The first time was in a small sail-boat when I was in high school. And the other two times were in sea kayaks. What I started to realize in the days after this recent accident, is that the theme seems to relate to my childhood.
When I was growing up my family went along steady state for periods of time. My first four years were relatively stable, then parents divorced and dad disappeared. After that I was the only child of a single-mom who was battling to succeed in a professional job with untreated bipolar disorder. From then on life could be relatively steady for periods of time, but with the constant threat of disruption.
Mom's moods went up and down much more than the average person. Was she going to crash on the couch when she got home or go running? Was she going to be talkative or irritable? Was she going to take us out to dinner or yell at me for not doing a chore correctly? I was highly tuned into her mood, which formed a great deal of my mental environment as a child.
Mom's judgment could often be questionable. She was not a particularly good judge of character, which meant there were a number of folks I was exposed to over the years that she later railed against as being terrible people. There was a major car accident we were involved when I was about nine years old in that was her responsibility.
Simply put, there were enough wild-cards coming towards our family that I was likely always somewhat on edge. "What's next?" My body was always prepared for the next impact, though what was coming was unknown. I carry the stress of that "bracing for impact" gesture every day. I'm not really ever free of it. I believe it affects my life quite a lot, though at a subtle level.
Which brings us back to sailing and boating. When I went to the next class after the accident and got into the boat I could feel my whole body tense. Whereas I had been feeling more relaxed and at ease navigating the boat prior to my accident, now I could feel fear rise up in me. I felt the most tense when I came around into the same kind of turn where the boom had hit me four days before. Physical memory. My body remembered the trauma and began to tense and brace for impact.
It seems to me that my body, my organism, my being remembers also the traumas of my childhood. Physical memory of a more diffuse nature. Something in me flinches and opens to fear when there's a trigger. In my adult life I have consistently gone into "rescue mode" when I am around my mom. Something in my basic make-up assumes that something will go wrong and that the consequences will be bad for me. So I go on alert.
One way this has come out is waiting by the phone (before I had a cell phone) while she was driving to our house for a visit. I assumed she was going to have troubles and so I was ready to get in my car and go rescue her at a moment's notice. Deep down I just knew something was going to go wrong. The shoe was going to drop. Brace for impact. And be ready to help out during the aftermath.
This same pattern has repeated countless times over the years. For the most part I think she has been unaware of the level at which I do this. Scanning what she says constantly for clues about possible traumas in the making.
The thing is, my mom has been doing better and better in recent years. She is more able to get around successfully now than ever, in my opinion. I am holding that pattern with her even though she needs it less. It seems very helpful to my mom for me to check in with her regularly (which I do, more or less weekly). But my "rescue mode" isn't really needed. It's from the past. It doesn't serve the present for me or her.
So how do I break (or is it adjust?) this pattern of mine? And how do I get over the part of me that assumes that the boat I am in is going to capsize (and which can make it a self-fulfilling prophecy)?
One piece my wife offered me this week was the idea of my being called to competency too early. She wondered if my sense of competency was affected by two things: First, being called by the situation of my family to take responsibility before I was ready. And second, that my parents were not able to effectively show me how to do things. I really had to guess at a lot of what I what I needed to do to become a functioning member of our culture. I didn't have a steady model for how to be a competent person in our world. I think I have done ok with what I have been given, but there are definitely gaps. Often the main issue is not that I am not able to do something. It's that I haven't been oriented in how to do it. And this has happened so often that I have a habit of low confidence when it comes to mastering a given activity. I wasn't given the model of a person excelling at something to know what that looks/feels/smells/tastes like. I have gifts but many of them still live in potential even though I am in middle age.
So basically I got a hit from at least two directions. From one side is the fact that I was never educated by my family to become competent and confident in activities, whatever they may be. And second, the "boat" of my family-life as a child frequently felt like it could capsize at any moment. The overall affect is that I can feel a bit tenuous about life, at a base-line level.
The good news is that I have resources at hand which can help me (and have helped me) in re-patterning myself: I want to evolve. I am willing to work at it. I am willing to look dumb and/or weak at times if it helps me grow. I have a tremendous support from my wife and family. I want to serve the world and find the way that helps me to do that.
I'm not sure this blow to the head has had the affect of making me think more clearly or not. But it sure has begged the question "Why did this happen?" on two levels. First, what sailing technique or awareness do I need in order to avoid this kind of accident in the future? And second, what deeper pattern of mine is this pointing to, and am I getting the message!? Will I learn from this experience or not?
If I get the message I will both be a better sailor and know myself at a deeper layer.
Your comments are welcome.
Warmly, Ben
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