Skateboarding Taught Me How to Fail in Public and Not Die

• Posted by Dez Fontaine May 13 Filed in Recreation #skateboarding  #youth culture  #street life  #failure  #persistence  42 views
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  I used to think skateboarding was about landing tricks. Took me years to realize it's actually the opposite. It's about eating concrete so many times that you stop counting. It's about your body becoming fluent in the language of failure, and somewhere in that repetition, you find something that looks like freedom.

  See, most people don't understand why skaters keep pushing. They watch from the outside and think it's about the aesthetic, the clothes, the music, the whole package. But that's surface level stuff. The real thing happening is deeper. When you're learning a kickflip or a heelflip or whatever, you're basically saying to the universe: I'm gonna look stupid and I'm cool with it. That's radical in ways that got nothing to do with how you look.

  I started skating because I was angry at everything. Home was loud, school was fake, and my brain felt like it was screaming all the time. Then I got on a board and suddenly I had a reason to leave the house that made sense to me. Not for anyone else. For me. And the beautiful thing about falling is that nobody can judge you harder than you judge yourself in that moment. So you get over it fast or you don't, but either way, you keep moving.

  The spots we ride at are just pavement and curbs and stairs. Nothing fancy. But they become sacred because they're where we showed up when nobody asked us to. Where we bled a little and laughed about it. Where we figured out that being broken doesn't mean you're finished. It means you're still in the game.

  People always ask me if I regret the injuries, the wasted time, the scraped knees. And honestly? Nah. Because those scars are proof I tried something. I committed to something that scared me. That's worth way more than any participation trophy could ever be.

  What's something you keep coming back to even though it terrifies you? What keeps you showing up?