There was a time not too long ago, when Izzi Gomez almost quit surfing forever. From the outside, she looked to be riding high, but behind the radical surf clips and smiling photos, Gomez had come unmoored. In a new film with sponsor Red Bull, “Chrysalis” Gomez tells the story of how she lost, then found herself and how she rediscovered her love for riding waves.  “I disappeared for a little bit,” Gomez told SURFER in a phone interview last week. “I was in such a bad place and I couldn’t get myself to feel good. I want to be open about it, because I feel like there’s so many people that feel the way I was feeling, and it’s awful.”  Even now, Gomez isn’t entirely sure what caused her mental health to unravel. Her troubles seemed to have started after a lengthy recovery from hip surgery in 2021. When she returned to big-wave surfing the following winter, the pressure to perform felt intense.…