by Liz Clark
Surrendering to Stillness
Mom is really upset with me the first few days after the accident, and I feel terribly guilty to be dependent on her for my every need, especially after all this time with my bum foot. Although I’m not excited to be bedridden in her tiny apartment, I know that full acceptance is my best refuge and will expedite my healing. I’m going to be okay, so I must embrace this and think positively. I must accept with trust if I am to understand why this has come into my reality.
I lie flat in my neck brace, staring at the ceiling, studying the plaster. I’m not going anywhere. Not returning emails, writing blog posts, completing shopping lists, or meeting anyone. I can’t even watch a movie, unless it’s projected on the ceiling. For the first time in, well, as long as I can remember, I just have to lie here and be.
In surrender, my mind feels more at ease; immobility has never been comfortable for me. On the upside: My foot will have more time to heal, and I don’t have to go back and face Rainui or the boatyard yet. In the downtime I research bone healing, holding my smartphone up over my face. I learn about the benefits of nettle tea and that, contrary to common belief, dark leafy greens do more than milk and dairy products to build bone. Nothing in my horizontal Internet research points to needing meat, so I stay with the decision I’d made after meeting the black boar in the forest, to cut out all meat and dairy products and eat a plant-based diet (aside from the occasional fish).
While I’m healing, I cut out all caffeine, refined sugar, alcohol, and processed foods, too. Mom is slightly shocked by my new diet—for “the girl that lived on cheese and ice cream”—but she graciously accommodates my picky requests while I devour audiobooks. At my three-week checkup, my doctor is impressed by the rate of my healing and loosens my leash a little.
Shortly after, my favorite high school English teacher comes to visit, and she calls again a week later. Would I like to house-sit her friend’s mansion in the pine trees for the next two months? Hell yes! Ironically, the beautiful home overlooks the beach where the accident occurred. Mom helps me get settled in and plans to stop by often, knowing it’s a great healing environment, with its big windows, ocean views, back patio, and even a sauna. I can walk around for short periods, but otherwise must stay on my back, wear my neck brace, and relax.
Friends come to visit, and one gives me a pair of prism glasses that make it possible for me to lie flat but see horizontally. I can now read books and watch movies.
I devour a stack of suggested books. Each one offers important messages, links spiritual ideas, and provides insight into how to push past the blocks that keep me from becoming the person I want to be. My neck break doesn’t seem like an accident anymore. When I made that list way back on the passage to Kiribati, I never expected to be here, but ask and you shall receive: Conversations with God, Power vs. Force, Mutant Message Down Under, Autobiography of a Yogi, Journey of Souls, The Sculptor in the Sky, and the Tao Te Ching all provide new tools, perspectives, and wisdom.
When I’m tired of reading, I throw on one documentary after another, and learn volumes about animal husbandry in America—the horrifyingly inhumane living conditions and undignified slaughter the animals are subjected to, the appalling life of slavery of a modern dairy cow, the incredibly costly environmental effects of animal agriculture. I’m shocked to learn that raising animals for meat and dairy is a significant source of the greenhouse gases that are causing climate change. And that clearing land for pasture is directly linked to deforestation, habitat loss, and a large majority of land-based species extinction. Or that it takes hundreds of gallons of water to produce the meat in a single hamburger!
I don’t understand why these issues aren’t better known, until I think about all the money involved. It becomes clearer why plant-based diets aren’t being promoted as solutions to heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis, cancer prevention, digestive issues, and more—despite plenty of research clearly pointing to their effectiveness. I watch stories of people winning triathalons, weight-lifting competitions, and a variety of endurance sports all on a diet of strictly plants—this myth we’ve been sold about needing meat for protein just isn’t true.
As I gain more mobility, I spend more time outside. I drink tea with my feet in the dirt, or lie on my yoga mat and meditate under the sky. It’s a miracle I get to heal and expand my mind in such a peaceful, therapeutic setting.
Nowhere to Hide
After four months of healing, and seven total months in the United States, I hop a plane back to the South Pacific, hoping that Rainui has moved on. Swell is unlivable—covered inside with black mildew—and I’m still not strong enough to deal with all the work needed to put her back together. Plus the charter company is giving me the runaround about properly making the collision repairs.
I’m lucky to meet a girl about my age who tends to a mountain property with a large home. Poana invites me to stay with her and we become sisters overnight. She’s fun and loves nature and adventure. Plus she’s going through a separation with her husband, so we help each other grieve.
Since Swell isn’t insured, the yacht charter service isn’t required to report the accident to their insurance company, and the miserly division manager makes a weak effort at fixing the damage. I eventually give up on being fairly compensated and finish the smaller repairs myself. Afterward, Swell spends more and more time in the yard untouched. I rest my neck a little longer, catch up on months of emails, meditate, harvest fresh fruit, do yoga, play in the sea, cook healthy food, and help Poana plant a garden. Putting my hands in the dirt feels so right. I seem to need the energy of the land. I’m safe and blessed. When I’m sad, Poana lifts me up, and I try to do the same for her.
The jungle paradise is almost too good to be true, until one day I hear a car pulling up the long driveway. It’s Rainui. I tried to keep my whereabouts from him, but someone in the village told him where to find the house “with the surfer girls.” I hide in a room and tell Poana to say I’m not there. All at once, the hillside home is no longer a safe oasis. A few days later, I hear the car coming up the driveway again. Goose bumps rise on my skin. Poana isn’t home, and I’m working in the garden. He speaks gently, telling me he wants us to try to work things out. But when I keep my head down, pulling weeds, uninterested in talking, he storms into the house, and takes my computer and phone, and drives away.
I nearly call the police, but his mother promises to return them to me the next day. Over the next month, while I try to get to work on Swell, things steadily go from bad to worse. The more I resist, the more Rainui persists. The island becomes very small. He’s unpredictable and always watching me. Since I don’t feel safe alone at Poana’s anymore, I stay aboard Swell one night in the yard when I know she’s out with friends. I lock myself inside and turn out the lights to go to sleep, but soon I hear someone coming up the ladder. It’s him. He must have seen the car I’m borrowing from Poana parked in the yard. He’s drunk and angry and wants me to open the door.
Realizing the cabin is locked from the inside, he smashes on the door, breaking the outside lock, then beats on the forward hatch and rips off its canvas cover, yelling that he knows I’m inside and he’s going to “break my face” when he gets in. I desperately call for help, shaking like a trapped mouse. The local police prove worthless, but I quickly get in touch with the yard owner and Poana. Rainui hears me and after a last violent attempt to get the door open, he slinks away into the dark, letting the air out of my car tires on his way. The yard owner and Poana show up shortly afterward. Lying next to Poana in her bed that night, I toss and turn with nightmares until dawn.
Submission
What the hell should I do? I don’t want to fly away. Where would I even go? I don’t want to leave my boat alone with him around, now that he’s certain I don’t want to get back together. I can’t think of anyone I can ask to fly down to protect me. Kepi is on another island and Poana has her own life to live. There is only one way to get out of this situation.
I know what I have to do, but it won’t be easy.
The next morning, I call Rainui and tell him I want to work it out. I’m ready to come and live with him at his family’s house, as he has asked me to repeatedly. This way he’ll feel control over me, which will calm him down, and I will be in less danger because his whole family will be around.
His mother, father, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew welcome me graciously. His mother shows me to a room Rainui and I will share in an abandoned house right next to theirs. There is no electricity or bathroom, but it doesn’t matter. There is a bed and a roof, and someone will always be in earshot. His family is warm and generous, and I pitch in with various chores. Rainui insists on helping me with the deck job on Swell, threatening that I’ll be sorry if I hire someone else. His family encourages him to help too, and they have meals ready when we return after a long day at the yard.
The next few months seem eternal. The back-breaking deck job lags on. With so many nooks and crannies to contend with, the only way to strip the paint is sanding by hand, which takes forever. Knowing I can’t get away until Swell is relaunched, I push myself through long days of intense labor when the weather allows. Rainui helps tremendously, although his behavior remains erratic. Even when he doesn’t feel like working, he comes along anyway, not wanting to let me out of his sight. I can’t talk freely to the people in the yard for fear he’ll be jealous.
I pray that they and the others I interact with during that time won’t judge me for my unfriendliness. This teaches me not to judge other people’s behavior either, since it’s never possible to fully understand its roots. Rainui’s frightening mood changes have me living in constant fear. He doesn’t hesitate to confiscate my belongings, or threaten me with violence when something flips his switch. Even the sunniest days seem stripped of color.
One day Rainui gets angry with me and pulls the car into an empty lot, yanks me out by my shirt, and says he’s going to hit me. I look him in the eyes. “Go ahead. Do it.” I seethe. He throws a punch at my face, stopping close enough to shear the hairs on my nose. My knees buckle in fright, and I cry out for help, but he puts his hand over my mouth and tells me to get back in the car. I plead with his mother that night, but there’s not much she can do, either. I become muted, docile, and compliant—a role I’ve never known—and I try to stay around his family on the bad days.
Once the topsides are finally sanded, they must be washed down and taped off for primer. More sanding after the primer coats, then a coat of white, then I work my way around the boat, hand-rolling and filling each area of nonskid with sand particles for grip, then another two coats of paint over the sand. Week after week I do nothing but work during daylight hours. Then just when I think I’m nearing the end of this nightmare, I discover one entire side of the rudder is delaminated. The whole thing must come off and be reglassed.
Another dark month goes by. I am so far from the moments of oneness and connection I have felt over the years. My confusion and frustration and isolation are excruciating. I hunt for a silver lining, but instead feel increasingly hopeless, betrayed by the Greatness that I once felt so near. I’m broken, lost, invisible. I don’t even look up at the moon.
When I am able to quietly share my story with other women on the island, I’m surprised to learn that many of them have dealt with similar situations— threats, bullying, psychological and physical abuse. I cry silently in the night at times, grieving with them. How can these women possibly pursue their talents and passions under such stifling circumstances? I know I will eventually get to sail away and have my life back. But here, and in so many other places in the world, women have nowhere to go, no money to get there, and no one to protect them. They must remain in these kinds of situations, constantly fearing for their safety.
The Great Escape
Finally, after more than four months under Rainui’s rule, it’s getting close to the time for me to make the final break. Swell is lowered back into the sea with beautiful new seafoam-green decks and topsides.
A boat with two young men is tied up near Swell in the slipway, and Rainui is instantly jealous. I watch his mood unravel and placate him as much as possible. That night I hear him come in and lie down on the other side of the bed. For many months he has stopped being affectionate, and rarely pushes to be intimate. I wait until he is sound asleep, then slip quietly out of bed to pack my few items with trembling hands, and carry them out to the car.
The next morning Rainui is still in a terrible mood and doesn’t want to come to the yard with me to move Swell out of the slipway. This is my chance. I leave some clothes in the room to throw him off, but notice that he’s hidden my favorite surfboard. I eat breakfast like nothing’s unusual and while he’s showering I’m able to find my board. I load it up and drive off with my heart beating wildly.
I spend the morning doing the bare minimum to get Swell off the dock, but there is a ton of stuff to shift and sort through to find what I need after so many months of work. When I turn on the motor to back out of the launching slip, I hear water leaking: There’s a crack in the plastic base of the strainer that filters the seawater before it flows to cool the engine. Miraculously, the yard owner has a replacement. I buy it and change out the broken piece immediately, knowing that Rainui could show up any moment. Instead, he calls around lunchtime and says he’s working on something with his cousin. He must not have noticed I took the surfboard.
“That’s fine,” I tell him. “I’ll be home later.”
By the time I’m ready to go, it’s almost dark. I’m exhausted and can hardly think about moving the boat. But when Poana and another friend, Aymeric, come by on their way back from a surf, they offer to help me— tying up their skiff behind Swell and climbing aboard for the crossing. The three of us sail away under a lopsided waxing moon.
Broken Open
Things don’t get easier right away. Rainui is livid and hunting me. He leaves crazy, threatening messages on my phone. He wants money and surfboards. I’m only one island away and worry terribly that he might find out where I am and come looking for me. And then, I wake up to find that half of my face has gone limp. Aymeric rushes me to the hospital, and I’m treated for Bells palsy, brought on by the last few months of high stress. I realize how far I have pushed myself, and the toll it’s taken on me.
I need a place to heal. Fortunately, Monique, Aymeric’s recently widowed mother, insists I stay in their guest bungalow and eat with them until I’m better, which the doctor says will take about three weeks. I have the local police listen to Rainui’s threatening phone messages. They warn him to stop, and that I can press charges. On top of the temporary facial paralysis, I develop a case of shingles that the doctors attribute to my severely weakened immune system.
I stare at my limp face in the mirror; I can’t believe I’ve let myself reach this state. I loved Rainui with all my heart, but I should have been loving my own self just as avidly.
I start doing small, nice things for myself every day. I sleep in, lie in the sun or soak in the shallows near the bungalow, not leaving their large, lush property. Feeling safe makes simply waking up a wonderful thing. I eat beautiful meals with my new adoptive family, take naps, meditate, reflect, and read. My face gradually returns to normal and the painful shingles dissipate.
After being forced to hide my body and my beauty, I want to cherish my feminine side like never before. Back on the boat, I cut my T-shirts into crop-tops, fringe the edges, and wear what I feel accentuates my body. I enjoy taking an extra five minutes to braid my hair or choose my outfit. I start surfing again, walking barefoot, and dancing.
I was naïve and self-righteous to think that I could get Rainui to evolve faster than he was ready for because of my advice. Every soul is undergoing its own unique journey at its own pace. I resolve that the only expectation I will have of a future relationship is that both of us feel happy, free, and fulfilled. Love means supporting each other to grow into the best versions of ourselves. What Rainui hated
about me—my openness and compassion—are parts of me that I love, and I’m thrilled to feel them reawakening.
As I heal over the next few months, I begin to feel outrageously liberated and stronger in mind than ever before—as if my heart is no longer broken, but broken completely open. Two fun-loving Spanish girls, Paula and Lucia, arrive to stay with Monique and Aymeric, and just being near them helps revive my playful spirit. As I remember what it’s like to be me again, I indulge in that me-ness like never before. I’m like a coiled spring that was pushed down flat, and I now shoot skyward in my freedom— bursting with inspiration and ready to completely love myself.
The deeper healing will take time, though. I’m still fragile. Gradually, I piece myself and Swell back together. I even begin to bless this dark experience, as hard as it was. I know I would not appreciate this heightened feeling of safety and freedom without the fear and oppression that I went through. In polarity, there is perspective. I have gained valuable compassion for women (and men) in similar situations. And lifted a few of the subconscious veils I was seeing life through. Maybe I also needed to know the depths of Rainui’s darkness in order to totally free myself from my hopes for his transformation.
New Crew, New View
When I’m ready to take to the sea again, my new friend Simon accompanies me back to the house I shared with Poana to pick up a few items I left in the garage. The house is empty and the garden full of weeds. Poana is no longer living there. As Simon and I step out of the car, a skinny adolescent orange-and-gray striped cat comes out of the bushes crying like a young child who skinned her knees. She rubs against my legs and tells me how lonely and hungry she has been, and how much love she needs. I scoop her up and cuddle her. I remember seeing her as a tiny kitten before I moved out.