Unsaid

There are moments when someone else’s words stop you, not because they are polished, but because they are true. My son wrote this. It stayed with me. It says something about youth, about friendship, and about the quiet weight of what we don’t always manage to say in time.

On surfing, silence, and the things we wish we had said by Q.O.Hay

As I drove down a winding shore road, I watched the day’s warm sun slowly lift above cotton clouds, leaving the sky painted with wild brush strokes of fiery reds, apricot oranges and baby pinks. Under the warm colours, the sea seemed cool in comparison, a solid blue mass, fringed with aerosol salt water sprayed up from waves crashing against a stubborn sandy shoreline.

A wonderful, yet lonesome setting. Nobody around to validate this coastal clash, punctuated only by silent silhouetted birds dive-bombing shoals of sand eels like feathered kamikaze pilots waging a quiet wildlife war of their own.

A stealthy draught crept its way through the van as I drew closer to the beach layby. Without thinking, I tensed and drew a deep breath, filling my lungs with stale salty air. I smiled a surfer’s smile.

…I adore the ocean.

Come to think of it, that’s why no one seemed surprised when I fell for surfing. I love the fascinating physics of fifty tons of wild water displacing my body, even when I am in over my head and the light leaves me. I love the strange calm required when coming to terms with loosely controlled vulnerability.

There is a trust that, eventually, after each fall, my board and I will always bob back to the surface—connected, ready to surf again.

It is often said that surfing is an act of complete focus. Personally, all I know is that all the worries in my world seem to dissolve when I am out on the waves.

Parked up, I watch as waves begin to build, shape, challenge gravity, and fail. Without thinking, I begin a familiar routine: reading the swell, digging out stale, wet kit whilst still snug and dry in my cosy van.

All adventures started like this.

This adventure was supposed to be shared.

We had been watching the weather patterns form for days. Together, we made plans and promises. The post-it note that sealed the deal was still stuck on the passenger side of the dashboard. The writing held my attention:

I remember him sticking it there, his waxy thumbprint still visible where he pressed it so hard I thought the cheap plastic dash might crack.

He always left me notes. Windscreen, locker, front door, even my surfboard. Endless supplies of brightly coloured post-its. This one was yellow, folded at the edges, stuck fast.

After he wrote it, he leaned back, put his stockinged feet on the dash (he knew that wound me up). As his feet steamed up his side of the windscreen, he nodded, grinned, and pointed.

I was amazed his body could produce enough heat to steam the glass. His skin always looked icy pale and bloodless. Maybe it was kinetic energy, he never stayed still. Always twitching, picking, shifting, tapping. An odd energy without fuel. I rarely saw him eat or drink.

He seemed to run entirely on bags of Skittles.

“I love these wee bags of broken rainbows,” he said, talking through a mouthful, spitting a purple lump between the seats. Strange, but poetic. That’s what I loved about him.

After we lost the purple lump, it grew quiet.

Instead of talking about wave dynamics, sea life, seaweed types, tidal drift (topics he never tired of), he stared into something that seemed to open in the footwell.

He turned the music down with a cold hand and whispered:

“Why is life so cruel?”

Unprepared, unsure if he was asking me, I just looked at him, shrugged, pressed my lips together like a stunned fish and muttered:

“I dunno…”

I wish I had said something more.

I wish I had been braver. More tuned in.

I had thoughts, half-formed, but real. A whole philosophy of life, sitting there, waiting. I’d wanted to share it with him for a long time.

But I bottled it.

That was it. I missed my chance.

Now, I find myself explaining it to an empty chair.

“It seems to me that life is just like the ocean. There are different conditions, different variables. It can be cruel, unforgiving, brutal, and change without warning. But people forget it can also be peaceful, inspiring, and beautiful.”

The chair stays silent, but I feel heard.

“Surfing is like life. It’s about balance, protection, planning, and the bravery to make mistakes.”

I imagine him chuckling, holding eye contact, telling me to shut up, but still listening.

“The ocean is life. Unpredictable, unkind, unique to everyone. Life is always changing, we have to adapt if we want to flourish.

The surfboard is the body. It carries us, lets us interact with the world.

The surfer is the mind, our thoughts, our consciousness, guiding it.

The wetsuit is mental strength. It protects us, gets us through the cold and dark.

The conditions are life’s challenges, losing a job, losing someone, disappointment, struggle.

But we have to trust that we will surface. We’ll be buoyant enough to push through. To surf another wave.”

Even in a surfer’s community, there are always those who judge. People who steal your waves.

Just like life.

“It’s about knowing who to trust. Learning to forgive. Looking out for each other. It’s safer to surf with others, but don’t let them control your ride.

Don’t let people push you off the wave. Don’t let them drag you under.

And if you get into trouble,your leash is there. Connecting you to your board.

That leash… that’s your sense of self-worth.

The more it’s tested, the more you learn to trust it.”

That’s as far as I got.

The empty chair seems to smirk, knowing he would have had me in a headlock, mocking me mercilessly.

I would take that any day, If it meant he was still here, steaming up my windscreen with threadbare socks, talking nonsense, explaining tides and seaweed and broken rainbows.

I wrote my own post-it and stuck it to the dash.

Then I stepped out of the van, shut the door, opened my mind, and walked towards the sea—fully kitted, ready.

Closing reflection

There’s something in this about youth, but also about all of us. The missed sentences. The conversations we rehearse too late. The metaphors we only find when there’s no one left to hear them.

And yet, there’s also resilience in it. In the idea that we surface. That we try again. That we keep paddling out.

I spend much of my time thinking about how places, objects, and everyday moments carry memory, often the things we don’t say, or don’t manage to say in time.

This feels like one of those moments..... thanks Q