As I headed off the freeway exit on my way to work this morning, I watched helplessly as a sizable gush of liquid cascaded across my front seat.

My water jug, which is admittedly rather large, doesn’t always have the tightest sealed lid. But until today, that factor has not proven to be an issue.

“Yup, seems about right,” I said aloud, watching water fill every nook and tiny cranny available inside my center console.

It just makes sense for my water to spill all over my car today. Any day, really. It’s just very on brand for me.

Although I didn’t recognize turning onto the onramp in a particularly aggressive manner, neither was I going unusually slow, I just understand why my water spilled. Fundamentally, minor inconveniences like this tend to plague my life in some sort of way or another.

This moment, however, had me feeling unsettled.

You see this is not the first time my water has spilled in some sort of unfortunate manner this week, but it’s actually the fourth. Every accident has had it’s own personal flare, with varying degrees of embarrassment or inconvenience, but nonetheless a particular pattern had begun to emerge.

On Saturday, my water quietly exploded on the carpet of my passengers side seat, filling the floor with water. The liquid only slightly touched my fanny pack, I had luckily moved my camera. My platform sneakers have too thick of a bottom for anything to seep through. I was in the clear.

Monday, the varying changes in altitude pressure on my drive back to Southern California through the mountains caused leakage onto the side of my suitcase. My technology escaped unscathed, only minor casualties to certain clothing items. They would later dry.

Tuesday, embarrassment struck hardest when I went to pick my water bottle up for a quick sip at the gym and watched with both horror, but not surprise, as the bottle dropped to the floor and splattered all across the floor. The gym man was very nice and was quick to take care of the spill. I apologized profusely. I’m not quite sure why, seeing as how I had hardly planned to fling my perfect amount of cold, refreshing water onto their nice dry floor. But alas, I felt a tinge of guilt for whatever minor inconvenience my clumsiness had caused.

It is really still this last one that gets me the most, though.

Leaving the house this morning I even questioned if I should fill my bottle.

I should just leave it empty, I’ll fill it up at work.

I’m on my way to get coffee, anyway, I won’t even need a sip of water.

It’s easier to cart the jug around if it’s devoid of liquid.

But before I left the house I filled the container with water. Fully to the brim.

I think it’s worth mentioning that after the spillage, there was hardly a drop left. The receptacle was nearly bone dry.

I’ve been very into signs lately. From the universe, that is. Since a brief session with a psychic medium (another long story for a different long day) led to the listening of an audiobook on signs my mother had suggested, I have been actively opening myself up to being more in tune with the great beyond. With loved ones who have passed on, spirit guides on the other side, really any opportunity to connect with a power much greater than just me.

And it hasn’t been crazy. I haven’t had any big, monumental experiences. But I have had little nuggets here and there, small symbols that make me believe, without a doubt some power is there.

So I thought the water was a sign.

But as with many of my dealings with the unknown, I went straight to a place of fear.

This was a warning sign. An ominous premonition. I felt uneasy, and sickly, and nervous.

My first big signs of anxiety in, I must admit, a very long time.

Someone’s gonna die. Something’s not okay. Immediately, I was searching for what could be wrong.

A tidal wave, I thought, is coming.

It makes sense. My emotional current has been too steady, too untouched for quite some time now, so yes this makes perfect sense. I’ve cracked the code, alert the media, CALL OFF THE CASE.

My water bottle spilling four times this week means something catastrophic is going to happen in my life and I am to blame.

I sound like a lunatic.

Genuinely, I know I do.

I read that sentence back, I am aware, thank you.

That thought lasted about as long as the stoplight I was waiting at when I exited the freeway.

Just long enough to pick up the spilled container of water and examine the bone dry evidence.

Which thankfully, for several reasons, was not long.

I acknowledged the absurdity of that thought pretty quickly. And it flowed seamlessly into another.

I’ve never surfed. In my life, actually, I’ve never set foot on an in-the-water-ready-to-use surfboard.

But the thought my mind surfed was “ride the wave.”

It sounds cheesy, but my eyes filled with a few tears, which candidly is not hard nowadays I have become somewhat of a softy, but its true that I felt a swell of emotion at this thought that maybe for once in my goddamn life I could just try to ride the wave.

I’m a swimmer, by nature. I was just born that way. My mother and brother (my poor father, we did not get this particular gene from him) are confident swimmers who glide through the water with ease. We, as a family, spent countless hours swimming what felt like miles in Lake Tahoe growing up. Any chance, Maxwell or I got, we were in the water.

I don’t remember learning how to swim. I mean I remember the process of getting better. Going to lessons and learning new strokes and dives and techniques but I could not explain how it begun — I couldn’t pin point the exact moment I knew how to swim.

But it doesn’t matter because for as long as I live, the water is going to be one of the places I feel most safe in the world. Where I feel free and untouched and away from harm.

Which is ironic that this morning I sensed a tidal wave and felt such cause for alarm.

Just try to ride the wave.

It’s the first rule of open ocean swimming that if you get caught in a current, not to fight the waves. You have to surrender, which seems counterintuitive, I know. But it’s what you have to do. You can’t panic.

Wouldn’t you want to swim away though? Retreat as far as you can from clear and present danger, thrash and pull and squirm and paddle and kick and escape.

Surprisingly, that is the exact moment when the tide will take you. When you continue to kick and paddle and squirm and pull and thrash and try with every ounce of your being to escape.

When you absolutely refuse to ride the wave.

I’m not the best at surrendering to things in my life. Even when I say I will, I hold on, most times for dear life to whatever person, place, or thing I am being forced to let go of. I try with all my might to kick against the current, thinking if I just swim hard enough, I will return to the same familiar shore and that person who feels like home will be waiting with open arms to welcome me back on the warm, sandy seaside and we’ll skip on our merry way to the island of nothing ever changes, everything stays the same.

Turns out that island doesn’t exist and if it did, I am almost positive it would be deserted.

Because no one could live there. Always fighting against the past.

I think I need to try surfing, for many different reasons not including the group message a guy at a local bar put me in full of 40 random strangers who occasionally meet up to surf as a gang.

I need to try surfing because I am a natural born swimmer. Who loves water. Who is so unafraid of water, yet entirely always fearful of change.

I feel like all my spilled water this week actually was a premonition. But not the nefarious, malevolent kind.

It was my sign to start actually riding the wave. This life wave. To stop beating and hoping and fighting for cease, boring, half-hearted change. But rather releasing into the flow.

I’d like to think it’s no coincidence that when I pulled into my driveway this evening the last song to come on shuffle was called “Monsoon.”

Here’s to riding the wave.

Oh, what a scary and exhilarating ride it will be.