Riding Past Fear
/By Tanya Chawla, produced by Out There Podcast
Released on November 4, 2021
Welcome to Out There Podcast. Our stories are written for the ear, so for those able, we recommend listening while reading along. Transcripts may contain minor errors; please check the audio before quoting.
(sound of footsteps on a trail)
WILLOW BELDEN: This is a sound that occurs in my life a lot. It’s the sound of me hiking.
And because I hike a lot, there are often times when I need to pee in the woods. Which raises a question of logistics. I could bring along toilet paper, but I don’t want to have to pack it out. And I also don’t like to drip dry.
Enter Kula Cloth.
Kula Cloth is a high-tech pee cloth. It’s made with antimicrobial fabric, and it has a waterproof backing, so you don’t get your fingers wet. You can use it in lieu of toilet paper any time you’re out on an adventure.
Kula Cloth is one of our sponsors, and they have a special deal, just for you. You can get 15% off your order by going to outtherepodcast.com/kula and entering the promo code outtherepodcast15. Again, that’s out-there-podcast-dot-com-slash-K-U-L-A, promo code outtherepodcast15.
(sound of footsteps comes to an end)
Hi, I’m Willow Belden, and you’re listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.
Ok to start things off today, who’s up for a challenge?
I don’t know about you, but I think challenges are a fun way to motivate myself. They’re a way to get myself doing things that I find meaningful.
The challenge I’m proposing today is this: I’d like to ask you to share Out There with your friends. At the end of the year, I’ll tally up how many referrals everyone has. The person with the MOST referrals will get a chance to be interviewed by the Out There team, and we’ll make a personalized audio story for you, based on that interview.
It’s super easy to get in on the fun. Just go to outtherepodcast.com/share to sign up for your own personal referral link, which you can share with your friends. When your friends click the link and listen to Out There, you’ll automatically be in the running for this challenge.
If you already have a referral link, just keep using that! And all your past referrals will count toward this challenge.
Again, the person with the most referrals by December 31 wins a custom-made story from us. Go to outtherepodcast.com/share — or click the link in the show notes — to get started. That’s outtherepodcast.com/share.
I think this is going to be really fun!
One other announcement: we have a brand new line of Out There merch! We have t-shirts, hoodies, mugs, even decorative throw pillows. And in addition to our regular logo-wear, we have a gorgeous new design by Wyoming artist Ashley Quick. It’s beautiful and fun, and I think you’re going to really love it.
Check it all out at outtherepodcast.com. Just click on the Merch tab. Again, that’s outtherepodcast.com.
And now, on to our story for today.
(Out There theme music begins to play)
Imagine the bones growing in your body. Now imagine they’re like glass. They break every time you fall, and they grow in twisted ways because of tumors. Every year, you have to have surgery to remove the tumors.
This was childhood for Will Cox. Because he was so fragile, he grew up fearful. Fearful of injury, fearful of the outside world. And this fear…became overpowering. It started to control his life.
That was probably the way his future would have played out — had it not been for a mountain bike.
Tanya Chawla has the story. And — trigger warning — this story discusses depression and suicidal thoughts. There’s also some adult language.
(theme music ends)
WILL COX: So as to date I am 24 years old, and I think I've had some 30 odd surgeries.
(rhythmic music begins to play)
I've had surgeries from head to toe — on my ankles, my knees, my hip, my shoulders, even a couple on my chest.
TANYA CHAWLA: That’s Will Cox. Will has a rare genetic bone disorder called osteochondromatosis.
Picture the area where two bones meet. That’s called a growth plate. And Will’s growth plates develop these tumors — non-cancerous, but still tumors.
WILL: And that causes your bones to grow in sort of weird, twisted ways. Like, my arms are kind of weird. My shoulders and my hips don't have like quite the motion that an average person would have.
And this disorder, the only way that you can treat it effectively is to have the tumors removed, so that just means a whole bunch of surgeries.
(music fades out)
TANYA: Along with all the surgeries, when Will was a kid, his bones were also unusually fragile.
WILL: I've broken both my legs, at least twice. And then both my arms, five or six times.
If a slide was too vertical, I wouldn't do that kind of slide. If I fell off the monkey bar, then I would, I would just, break both my legs, and then an arm too, or something.
There's this one time I was in a Radio Shack, and I was just walking around in the Radio Shack with my dad, and I just tripped and fell and — boom — broke both the bones that time too.
TANYA: It was a rough childhood. A childhood full of trips to the hospital, and medications — both for his bone disorder and for ADHD.
And all of that made it hard for him to do things other kids were doing.
WILL: Other kids were playing, you know, starting to play sports but I never did anything — really like play soccer, even, just go on a run, jog; you know, simple stuff.
And there was one time where I wanted to actually try playing soccer. And, it's just kids playing soccer, you don't actually have to be good, but I guess I was worse enough that they wouldn't even let me be part of the team in a sense. They just sort of let me on the sidelines, right. Gave me a pair of binoculars and said, “Uh, tell the goalie when the ball is getting close to him.”
At first I honestly kind of got into it, because I thought I was helping out the team, but then I realized what I was doing was pointless, because the goalie can see the ball. Like it's all he's doing is watching the ball. What am I doing? Just sitting over there looking pretty.
Eventually it did dawn on me that what I was doing was just worthless and I kinda just put the binoculars down and just sat in the corner there.
(quiet background music begins)
TANYA: We’ve all been there. Being young and wanting to do what all the other kids are doing. But Will wasn’t given the chance. And that shattered his confidence.
That experience on the soccer field made Will turn his back on the outdoors.
He already knew the outdoors could hurt him. He'd broken bones just tripping on a rock. And now, a kids' soccer game left him feeling lonely and isolated.
WILL: It definitely made me see the world as a really dangerous, scary, evil place. And made me wanna kind of just be inside and do not much.
(Will chuckles)
I was not very strong. I was not very durable. So it just sort of made me see threats everywhere.
So a lot of my free time was spent inside playing video games, building Legos.
(music fades out)
TANYA: As Will got older, his fear took on a mind of its own and started making decisions for him.
Here’s a story from when he was in high school.
WILL: Me and my friends were going to a beach in Santa Cruz, and there's this beach where you can walk all the way along the beach to where it’s sort of like a stone wall. And you can climb up the stone wall and just keep going onto the other side of the beach basically.
But it's really high. And to climb up to the top, you have to sort of like be on the side of the cliff, and hold on to this rope that people have nailed into the side of the rock.
So it's, it's pretty terrifying. Cause you fall off, you fall into the ocean, into the rocks below. I'm pretty sure even someone more durable than me would not be okay.
So every single one of my friends went to the top of the damn thing. Except me.
(soft guitar music begins)
And I was too afraid to actually get up to the top. They were like, “Oh no, dude, it's all good. You know, it's like, it's just a stupid hike or whatever, right?” Just, didn't seem afraid. And I just felt filled with fear. Like I couldn't move.
TANYA: This was more than just a fear of heights. It was a fear of injury, it was fear of breaking his bones again.
And the result was that Will was left out — again. But this time, it wasn’t other people who were holding him back; it was his fear.
WILL: Fear isn't like a tangible thing, you know? You can't touch it, you can't see it, you can't smell it. So you think that you can get some kind of grip on it, right? Like you can, if you're afraid you can take a deep breath or something, and then that feeling's gonna just subside— or you'll, you'll have some kind of control — but the reality of the situation is you just kind of feel afraid, and you just get stuck in that feeling, you know?
(music fades out)
TANYA: Will’s fear touched almost every corner of his life, even things unrelated to his condition.
WILL: I mean, when I was a kid, I was kinda just afraid, like all the time. Like I know that sounds harsh but…have you ever seen a mosquito eater? It looks just like a giant mosquito, and the name is pretty apt to what they do. They just eat mosquitoes. All my life I've been terrified of these things. They're just, they're awful.
(quiet background music begins)
TANYA: Will was also afraid to talk to people. He always had a lot of social anxiety.
WILL: I've kind of always been really introverted, you know, like large crowds make me nervous and all that shit. Loud noises and all that stuff — no good.
Growing up, I didn't necessarily go to a lot of those like school social events, those dances and shit like that. I'd just stay home, do homework.
So it was sort of my inability to connect with people, you know, like, uh, I had such a different life experience. And it's such a different point of view that when I would converse with people, it wouldn't click, you know what I mean? I was way too serious, honestly. I just, that, that weird kid who just couldn't seem to enjoy life.
My mortality was kind of just way too...I was way too aware of it.
(music fades out)
TANYA: As Will got older, the fear morphed into depression. A crippling depression. Depression so bad that he checked himself into a mental hospital.
After getting out, he started college, hoping the change would help. But it didn’t, and eventually he dropped out.
WILL: I got really depressed about the whole thing. Like I felt like it was kind of an unsolvable problem. And when you get depressed, it's kind of hard to see anything else than just the, uh, the shit.
I thought that that was just going to be what life was: taking drugs — taking the medication, doing things I didn't want to do. The fucking black hole of nothingness.
It was just, it was getting to the point where I didn't feel safe around myself. And it turned into me being pretty darn suicidal.
(subdued music begins)
TANYA: Things came to a head one day when he was on his lunch break from work.
WILL: It was the stupidest fucking thing. I was going, getting lunch at Jack in the Box and the, the cashier, the person who hands you your food, forgot the honey mustard for my chicken nuggets. And that was the start of just total awfulness. Cause I was already kind of having a bad day, and food is kind of a weird thing with me.
The ADHD medication really messes with your appetite. It really just makes you not want to eat. I'm super, super picky. I need things to be kind of the way they need to be. Otherwise I just can't eat it. So not having honey mustard was a big no-no.
I just kind of had like a, a really bad panic attack in the parking lot and it was on my lunch break, right. So my 30-minute lunch break eventually came to 45 minutes, and then to an hour. So my boss came looking for me because he's like, you know, “What the fuck's going on?”
And I was just like in the car crying and, uh, I think I went to the mental hospital like a couple hours after that.
(music fades out)
TANYA: This was the second time Will had admitted himself into a mental hospital.
And it was here that he hit rock bottom.
WILL: My lowest point was probably like, after that sitting in my room. My fear and depression and all that shit was just too much.
This is going to sound awful, but I feel like rock bottom is kind of necessary. When you're spiraling out of control, you got to eventually hit rock bottom because, if you don't, then it's just going to keep going. And once you hit that rock bottom, that's where you can find the strength to actually go all the way up.
(music begins)
So, at that moment I decided that, since I've, you know, gone to so many other people — hospitals and, you know, got ideas from other people and all that shit — that I was just going to take total control of my life, because getting, you know, advice and help from other people just wasn't working.
So I stopped taking all of the medications, stopped going to the doctor's appointments, stopped having surgeries. Just sort of started doing more normal things, I guess.
(music changes tone)
TANYA: OK, so reality check. This was pretty radical.
But it wasn’t quite as far out as it sounds. As for the surgeries, Will was fully grown by now. And when you stop growing, the tumors in your growth plates stop growing too. So it wasn’t that risky to stop having more surgeries.
And in terms of going off of his medication, Will admits, going cold turkey is not the best. He experienced withdrawals, life became a lot harder, his depression got heavier...
It’s like a faucet that hasn’t been open for ages. When it’s opened for the first time in a long time, it spews out guck. The water’s dirty. It’s gross. But give it some time, and the water starts gushing out clear.
This was Will’s guck. Yes, it was tough — Will was feeling all sorts of raw emotions. But something inside of him was telling him he was moving in a better direction. He was moving towards clear water.
(music ends)
WILLOW: Hey, it’s Willow. We’ll hear the rest of the story in a moment. But first…
One of the things I’ve been trying to do lately is be intentional about the things I buy. Whenever possible, I want the stuff I purchase to be eco-friendly.
But sustainable shopping is often easier said than done. Doing the research takes time, and let’s face it — I would rather be out hiking or biking than combing the internet to figure out which brands are easy on the environment.
This is where a company called tentree comes in.
Tentree is one of our sponsors for this episode, and they are a great place to find all sorts of essentials that are guaranteed to be earth friendly.
They sell clothing, activewear, outerwear, underwear, and more. And they plant TEN TREES with every item purchased.
To learn more about tentree’s planting mission (and grab some comfy, sustainable clothing) go to tentree.com. Use the promo code OUTTHERE to get 15% off your first order. That’s T-E-N-tree-dot-com, promo code OUTTHERE.
And now, back to the story.
WILL: The first time I remember doing something like normal in a sense, right, it was me going with my group of friends to this bonfire.
(soft but plucky music begins)
TANYA: And there was beer at this bonfire, and alcohol was one of the many things that Will was afraid of. He thought:
WILL: A sip of a beer would, you know, like the liquid would start melting my throat and I’d just die — convulsive seizure right there.
TANYA: But he was tired of his fear.
WILL: I feel like at a certain point you just kind of get sick of being afraid, you know. Like it's, it's not fun. You just sit there and you feel bad, and then you don't get to do the fun things that other people are doing.
So you just kind of get fed up with not doing nothing and then you do something, and sometimes it might be too rash, but oftentimes it's kind of like that the push you need to break the threshold or whatever.
TANYA: So he had his first sip of beer at this bonfire. And lo and behold, the beer did not cause any convulsive seizures.
WILL: Yeah, so I started doing more normal things like hanging out with friends, and staying out late, doing typical teenager kind of things. And I felt like that, that really helped me. You know like, it made me feel like I wasn't so different from everybody else.
Because once you start facing your fears, it’s just, it's like dominoes; it all becomes easier. Like that one fear it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, I did that. Maybe I could do this.’ And then, you know, then you start moving onto the big fears.
TANYA: The big fears. Like getting seriously injured. Participating in outdoor activities.
(music fades out)
For Will, tackling this big fear started with a neighbor. A neighbor who mountain-biked. Chris.
WILL: He was an amazing mountain biker. It was like...he could do the stuff TV people do.
And it really inspired me. Like I wanted to be able to do what he did. You know, I've always been able to ride a bike, but he — he makes it look like it's art.
(upbeat music begins)
TANYA: Now mountain biking is an inherently dangerous sport. Even people who are perfectly healthy can get seriously injured doing it.
But Will was on a yes streak.
WILL: Being off the medication and doing more things that I wanted to do, I decided that I was going to try to bike more. Just cause I wanted to hang out with Chris, honestly.
So I bought a bike from him, and we just kind of went around doing bike stuff. Like bike around the town and, you know, he'd honestly just show off and I'd just sit there drooling. I'd be like, “Oh my God.”
TANYA: Will was scared at the beginning, but something about watching Chris mountain bike was captivating. He wanted to push himself, he wanted to get better.
(music ends)
One day he went to a bike festival with Chris and tried out an e-bike, an electric bicycle. You still pedal, but there’s a motor to help you out.
WILL: And, the motor on it made you be able to, you know, you could be 300 fricking pounds and bike straight up a 20% incline, 20 miles an hour. It made me be able to keep up with my really skilled friends.
Pretty much my whole life, I've just been the last picked for the team, you know what I mean? So being around people who were always first picked for the team and not being last picked, like being part of the group, was pretty self-fulfilling.
It made me want to get more physically fit so that I could actually keep up on no motor required.
TANYA: So he started practicing.
(upbeat music begins)
WILL: I took my little dirt jumper and I just started to practice riding the, a, little two-mile stretch of road from my house to this little viewpoint.
At first it was, it was grueling. Like the first hundred feet I’d be pouring sweat, on the ground, panting, wanting to die. And it ended up like that for like the first couple times. And then eventually you get strong enough to, uh, set little goals, right?
I’d try to bike all the way to this big old boulder without getting off the bike. And, you know, eventually you get halfway to the boulder, get all the way to the boulder, you get a little past. And eventually I got up to biking all the way to the viewpoint without getting off the bike.
So it just kind of, it adds up — you do half a mile, and half a mile turns into a mile, and a mile turns into two, and two turns into three.
(music ends)
TANYA: Will kept biking, kept going farther and farther. But his fear of serious injury hadn’t gone away.
And then something happened. Something that changed everything he knew about that fear.
(lively music begins)
I was biking at UCSC, pretty fast, following my friend, we were towards the end of the trail. And there was a rut in the trail where the water had eaten it out.
I saw it coming up. I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be weird.’
And I had a choice to either, you know, get off the bike — not hit that feature — or ride through. And I decided, you know, I'm going to ride through.
I don't know if you know, but when you ride over ruts, you're supposed to lean back, as to not have too much weight over the front handlebars.
I did not know this. So I had too much weight on my front handlebars, and my wheel dug into that, that little rut. I flew over the handlebars.
I thought like, as I was falling, mid-fall, I was, I was sure that I was going to have to have like an airlift out of there, or my leg was going to be broken…something was just going to be not good.
(music ends)
TANYA: Will hits the ground.
WILL: I think I sat there for like a good 30 seconds, just kind of laying on the ground. Just like, ‘What's going on? It's all good? This is it?’
TANYA: So, pause. Here’s a kid who broke his leg at a Radio Shack. And now he’s just had his bike land on top of him after a 360, and he’s FINE? No broken bones?
Yeah, yeah no broken bones.
(airy music begins)
Will still doesn’t know why he escaped that accident unharmed. But the upshot was that he was fine.
WILL: It's certainly a moment that I conquered my fear. You know, going into it, like, I saw that rut and I was like, ‘Oh, okay. This is, this is going to be interesting. What's going to happen?’
But fear, it's weird. You're afraid. You're afraid. You're afraid.
But then you do it and it doesn't, you don't get hurt. You're like, ‘Oh shit. That's, that's pretty cool.’ And then it kind of slowly turns into excitement.
So, how far can you push that?
Within that year, I started riding, you know, 5, 10, 20...started pushing 30 miles. My parents are fitter than me. And they’re numbers that could, you know, impress them. It felt good, it made me feel like I was part of the crew, you know, worthy.
(music fades out)
TANYA: The accident didn’t just help Will conquer his fear. It paved the way for changing his life.
WILL: Yeah, it was kind of like a systemic change. I started eating better. I started being more healthy. Just being, being able to do things that I didn't think I could do made me more confident in other aspects of my life.
After that, like I, I strike up conversations with people at the store. I would talk with my barista and all that shit. Like, stuff that I would just never do before.
I'm no longer afraid of mosquito eaters. Since falling off the bike wasn't very scary anymore, then all the bugs and the, you know, the scary people and things that just generally terrified me just didn't do that anymore.
TANYA: Will was starting to feel normal.
WILL: Like, I hate that word. Cause it's, there's no such thing as normal. But it made me feel included. Definitely happier.
I was doing things that I wanted to do, and I didn't, you know...there's challenges in everything you do, but these challenges weren't like defeating me, you know. They weren't just totally awful, you know. I didn't just go in — lose, lose, lose. I was going in, I may lose once or twice, but eventually I would actually get it done. I'd win.
So, gave me a sense of hope.
(cheerful music begins)
Nowadays I spend probably like 90, if not almost all my time — all my free time — outdoors. Biking, hiking, climbing, doing all kinds of stuff. I'm even trying to work my professional life into my hobbies. Like find a way to bike and get paid, or something like that.
TANYA: Now of course, Will’s condition hasn't gone away. He’s left sore. He needs to rest more than other people. He has these bumps and lumps all over his body. He hasn’t broken any bones yet, but he has torn his ACL. And he’s still aware of his own mortality.
But his fear isn’t limiting him anymore. That’s the difference.
WILL: Before, I wanted to probably spend every day of my life inside until I die. Now, I can't, I can't even, like I can't even wrap my head around that thought. That's just like crazy.
Being on a bike, it's like an expression of, of human freedom, you know? Like when, when I'm on the bike, it's, it's like I'm sitting at an easel or something, you know. It's, it's...my bike is my paintbrush, and the trails are my canvas.
WILLOW: That story was reported and written by Tanya Chawla. Tanya is one of our most recent production interns. She’s a sophomore at UC Berkeley.
Editorial assistance for this story from Melat Amha.
(music fades out)
If you have a friend who you think would enjoy this episode, please share it with them! Go to outtherepodcast.com/share to sign up for your personal referral link. And as I mentioned at the top of the show, whoever has the most referrals by the end of 2021 will get a custom-made story from us.
And in the meantime, there are lots of different rewards you can earn along the way.
Get in on the fun by going to outtherepodcast.com/share. Or just click the link in the show notes.
Thank you so much!
Thank you also to all of our financial supporters, including Sam Shopinski, Phil Timm, Doug Frick, Tara Joslin, and Deb and Vince Garcia. I’m so grateful for your generosity.
If you’re not yet supporting the show and you would like to, you can become a patron for as little as $2 a month. Just go to patreon.com/outtherepodcast. That’s P-A-T-R-E-O-N-dot-com-slash-out-there-podcast and I have a link to that in the show notes as well.
(Out There theme music begins)
If you’re new to Out There, check out the “Best of Out There” playlist. This is a collection of some of our favorite episodes of all time — and it’s a great introduction to the range of stories we do on the show. You can find Best of Out There on Spotify, and at our website outtherepodcast.com.
That’s it for this episode. Our advertising manager is Jessica Taylor. Our audience growth director is Sheeba Joseph. Cara Schaefer is our print content coordinator. Our interns are Melat Amha and Tanya Chawla. Our ambassadors are Tiffany Duong, Ashley White, and Stacia Bennet. And our theme music was written by Jared Arnold.
We’ll see you in two weeks.
(theme music ends on a last whistling note)
