Dropping at 120 mph for 45 seconds at 10,000 feet seemed like a good idea at the time...
It was 4th of July weekend. I had just gotten my heart broken and needed to do something to jolt myself out of the sadness and I knew my ordinary means of cajoling myself were not going to cut it. So what's a girl to do? Jump out of a perfectly good airplane... Why did I choose skydiving? Beats me! It is the one extreme sport I said I would never do, but at that moment I needed to scare myself a little so I could feel alive. There I was with one foot still inside the plane and the rest of me standing on the platform outside the plane with my instructor asking me "are you ready to skydive?" My answer "why not".
For the first 5 seconds of free-falling through the sky I could not catch my breath, much like the beginning of a break up. Everything seemed foreign and in slow motion. I felt paralyzed and scared. Then I opened my mouth and inhaled and my whole body relaxed. I had been holding my breath. For the next 40 seconds I could feel the wind on my body, I could hear the sound of the speed with which we were racing towards the ground, and I felt the complete freedom of dropping from the sky. If I could have continued to free-fall longer, I would have said yes.
As unnerving as it was in the beginning of the jump, throwing myself out of that airplane and embracing the free-fall set me free. Just as embracing the break up, has freed me to pursue other adventures.
My next free-fall? Hopping in my race car and competing in a road race around Nebraska this week. And yours?
