Brave Mania

I’m beginning to wonder if maybe the story you want to tell isn’t the story you’re actually meant to tell. Like that girl who wrote about having sex with her husband every day for a year. Do you think she wanted her dad to read that? Her neighbor who washes his creepy van in synthetic white basketball shorts on the weekends? Her kid’s teachers? You can’t pick your audience— you can’t pick your story.I want to write about being a mother and loving the ocean.It makes perfect sense for me. It makes too much sense, maybe. Surfing and motherhood are about being a BRAVE MANIAC and so is writing. This makes me so excited and so catatonic.Should I stay up late writing and cry and pull on skin that seems too tight for my body because I'm feeling so alive? Stare at the stars and freeze? I don’t want to. I want to sleep and become exactly brilliant once 2 p.m. strikes and both kids are asleep, then I want to close my computer and carry on picking up Calico Critters and making soup. I want my parents to read my book and exclaim to each other (in my presence) how worth-it my college tuition had been. How proud they are because I became more than I could have been. But fate doesn't seem to care what you want.David Sedaris wrote, “If I were to master an instrument or do anything creative with my life, I’d have to do it for myself, and myself only.”How uncomfortable to be so selfish and so unabashedly self aware. But then, I think of all the good stories that have come out of it.

+surf photos: Sarah Lee