On Pretending to Love Roller Coasters:
How I faked it till I made it to a new relationship with surrender
The year was 1991, probably, but that’s a total guess. All I remember is that I was finally tall enough to ride The Runaway Train at Six Flags Great Adventure.
My brother and cousins were all riled up, trying to goad my sister and I into going on.
The prospect terrified me, but I was always eager to impress.
“I’ll go on it!”
I charged into the queue line with a sense of calm I had no business possessing. Perhaps the blissfully ignorant kind of calm, because the second we pulled out of the station and I felt the clank of wheels on steel tracks, I froze.
As the train took a quick turn and approached the lift hill, I held my breath.
When the chain lift caught hold of the first car and began to drag us upward, I was done.
Full-bodied panic. Shaking. Shallow breathing.
I don’t remember much about the ride except being hunched over with my eyes slammed shut, my forehead bumping against the padded lap bar. It was a fast, rough ride, and I saw none of it. I only felt it… and I hated absolutely everything that I felt. Every stomach swoop. Every breathtaking floaty sensation.
We pulled to a stop at the final break run, and I had a few moments to collect myself since we had to wait for the next train to leave the station before we could pull back in.
Affixing a painfully fake smile to my face, I threw my cousin a big thumbs up when she turned around to check on me.
And that was the day that I became a fraud.
From then on, I would repeat this pattern of enthusiastically agreeing to ride coasters, only to shut my eyes and endure the entire experience while actually on them.
That, or, I would conveniently get a bad stomachache RIGHT when it was time to get on line - Imagine my luck! - and entirely avoid riding the scariest ones.
I always talked a big game, sometimes even before arriving. Any school or family trip to a theme park was my time to play the part. I plastered that same smile on my face each time, and no one was the wiser.
Privately, of course, I hated every second of every coaster I went on… but it was worth it to maintain the persona of a cool, dare-devilish risk-taker kinda gal.
It took nearly a decade for the façade I'd built to finally unravel.
The lift hill on Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Great Adventure was where my deception met its tear-filled end.
Perhaps my boyfriend at the time wasn’t the first to notice my eyes-slammed-shut-holding-on-for-deal-life position, but he was the first to say something to me about it.
“Umm, what’re you doing?”
“What?”
“You can’t keep your eyes shut, that defeats the whole purpose of the ride!”
I shook my head, “”Oh I’m not keeping my eyes open.”
“What?! You have to! And you have to let go too, that’s the only way to ride, you’ll see!”
I am paraphrasing, not just because this happened over two decades ago, but also because I was scared out of my mind during this interaction, as we were rapidly ascending the lift hill to the first drop, and my cover of so many years had just been BLOWN.
What I do remember, though, is a yearning.
As he made his earnest appeal to me, begging me to just let go and enjoy the ride, I felt something inside of me say “yes.”
My eyes began to well with tears.
I wanted what he was saying. I wanted to finally be the person I had been claiming to be for half my life.
“Okay,” I said out loud.
And then… it was decided.
I approached the top of the lift hill with my eyes wide open. Pretty quickly, we were flying down at an angle and entering the first loop. My eyes could not believe what they were seeing. My feet in the air with a bright blue sky behind them.
Whoa. I was missing this?!
It was all I could think.
Noticing that I was still holding on for dear life, my boyfriend encouraged me to let go. I did.
What I experienced was, for a moment, sublime. Then terrifying again. Then, again, sublime.
It went on like that, back and forth the whole time.
I was screaming, then laughing, then scream-laughing. All in all, it amounted to an experience of bliss, something I had never experienced on a roller coaster before… because I had never allowed myself to experience a roller coaster before.
And isn’t that just how it goes for us?
In life, I mean. I’m taking a quick right turn into present day reality.
Don’t we clench? Don’t we shut our eyes? Don’t we hold on tight and cling to safety? Don’t we do anything in our power to pretend we have control over the uncontrollable? Don’t we refuse to let go?
And if so, does it not logically follow that to let go, to surrender, would land us in a state of bliss?
Ah, but how? How do we integrate this practice of surrender into our lives?
Well, that’s something I am exploring. On my own, first, but also with others.
In the years since that fateful ride with my 9th grade boyfriend, I have gone from:
Still being scared but practicing letting go → full surrender and never once holding on.
I achieved the latter only last month.
You see, after announcing to the world that I would be taking clients to ride roller coasters, I decided that I needed to shed the last vestiges of fear I was still harboring around them myself.
Since then, I have been to Six Flags Great Adventure about ten times. Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.
On one solo visit, I managed seventeen rides on coasters, three of those being on Kingda Ka, which is the tallest coaster in the world
.
I think it is safe to say I have officially reached the dare-devilish risk-taker kinda gal identity in earnest.
I want to ride any and every coaster available to me, all over the world. Even this completely mental one they’re building in Saudi Arabia right now. I already have a friend who has said she’ll meet me there.
In the meantime, I will be escorting clients, both individuals and teams, into parks to have a day of surrender.
The idea that my coaching business could include this was such a terrifyingly exciting prospect, that I have put it off since I first had it about seven years ago.
My announcement of this intention was my own unmasking. No boyfriend to call me on my BS this time, I had to do it.
I have no idea how it’s all going to look from here, but I have committed to keeping my eyes open, letting go, and enjoying the damn ride.
Share this post with someone who might need more surrender in their life. Or leave me a comment. Or BOTH?!
love this!!! ❤️
I literally get sweaty palms reading all your stuff lately about coasters hahaha. It took me a long time to get over the intense belly/heart swooping sensation of coasters but I also now love them. Still a no to falling/elevator type rides but love a good coaster!
I also love this next level of fun/action-based integration practice you're cultivating for yourself and clients!! so fucking cool.