Funny, as I look back on this,
writing it with the older and wiser mind of a few weeks later, how each episode
of this mini voyage of rather painful self discovery, aligns itself with some
form of activity. In fact I think this is what is happening. Everybody has a
demon. Mine is a tendency to feel inadequate. I felt this as a child, I felt it
as a young adult, I felt it at work, at home, at school, and I even felt it on
the day M proposed to me. I accepted with tearful joy and unequivocal
certainty. But I spent that night awake, next to him, unable to believe my luck
but also to banish an uneasy thought that he was making some terrible mistake,
and should marry someone better. It’s not something I have ever felt every day,
it’s just something I always feel in my unguarded moments. Traveling strips
your guard away. Activities like cycling
and kayaking, whilst amazing, tend to create posts from which to hang yourself
if you are already going down that sort of pathway.
The kayak is a beautiful yellow
and orange, echoing the sunrise we see this morning as we wake up, breakfast
and get ready to set off. The sea is a brilliant blue green and reflects the
sunlight. We plan to kayak to a relatively close by island, pull up on the
beach for a while, and then have a stroll around the island community, which is
isolated and, as yet, untouched by the tourism which is sweeping, with all its
gains and ills, across Southern Thailand.
We set off. It’s nice. Kayaking,
I discover, is one of the few things which I don’t seem to be afraid of. I am
pleased, and cocky, about this. But I am enjoying myself. M is too. Not only is kayaking fun and
beautiful it’s quiet and calming, and we seem to be good at it. I am not
plagued by some sort of clumsy reticence which makes me feel less able than M,
or than others generally. In fact I seem to be fine at kayaking. I can do it.
We kayak to the beach which is
beautiful, where we stroll for a while and pick up shells. Then M suggests that, as the kayak journey
had felt over all too soon, we should kayak all the way round the island. I
agree. We set off again.
It’s going fine, I navigate us,
rather obsessively, around rocky outcrops, being far more concerned about
damaging the property of someone else than I ever would my own. It’s fine until
we get all the way around the other side of the, actually, quite large, island.
This side of the island, it’s open sea. The
waves are bigger and more blustery, the nearest land, other than the
island we are skirting, is very far away and there is a strong current which
pulls us, continually, away from the island we are skirting, and closer to the
nothingness that is open sea. Worse, in the distance, we can see a storm
brewing.
Or that is how it feels. Most of
it is true, but thinking back on it, and cross referencing my impression with
M’s, the nearest land was another island which was further away than we would
sensibly kayak, but was in sight. We were not in open sea, with no land in
evidence, encircled by sharks and man eating pirhanas. Even so. I am fearful.
And it seems to me that no one else would be scared. That this reaction is only
me. Anyone else in the same situation would be ably kayaking their way round
the island, pulling capably and strongly at the oars, and whooping in delight
at the added adrenaline. I feel, once again, inadequate. M is having to work
harder to resist the current, but he doesn’t seem worried.
“I think,” I say with an edge to
my voice which is becoming all too familiar to both of us, “that we should
sometimes just do the thing everyone else does. Most people just kayak to the
island and back. They don’t go all the way round it for extra kicks. Most
people just go for a short cycle ride. They don’t do 30k on mountainous
terrain.”
There is possibly some truth in
this. We do tend to do things rather by extremes. We walk miles, we bike,
kayak, climb further. M likes to challenge himself. I am just somebody who
quite likes to do things with enormous enthusiasm. “If a job’s worth doing,” my
Mum always said, “it’s worth doing well.”
In this moment however, this all
seems like a calculated thing aimed at burying my already struggling self
esteem even further under the increasing arsenal of weapons I am collecting
against myself. Every time we do something, we try to do something big, and so
I am more likely to be afraid and fail. If we had simply kayaked to the island
and back again, I reason, it would have been fine, and the day would have been
one I could use as a shield to defend myself against the onslaught
of ‘Reasons I am Not Good Enough’. Now we have decided to do extra kayaking, I
have put myself in a position in which I become afraid. This is making me more
afraid.
Oddly enough, I will eventually
come to rather the opposite conclusion. And, predictably, we will make it round
the island and home before the storm and in time for a, on my part, rather
subdued, tea.
But right now, I am sat, sweating
in a kayak in the middle of an ocean, and it is not nearly as dark and
dangerous as the one I am flailing around in internally.
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