Falling

It’s taken me a few days to be able to write. More than a few. Processing? Digesting? how one day I woke and decided since I couldn’t donate blood or become a live donor and that I can’t donate anything I’m currently needing, that I should fall from a plane. They say jump but there was no jumping it was falling. Sort of a roll out and in fact I was pulled out since I was attached to someone.

I planned it and didn’t think about until it was time to do it. I forced myself to not think of it so I wouldn’t accidentally overthink it and when I over think who know what I will come up with. So I didn’t think of it at all. So I would just do it. Just see what it was like to fall and be ok. Or not. To not hang on. To maybe feel like I was flying but I felt like I was falling with nothing to hang onto. So I let go. If I kept my arms in and don’t spread them out we would fall quicker and I would be heavier for the other jumper who pulled me from a plane two miles on the air.

I don’t have a bucket list. This wouldn’t even have been on it. I don’t think I need a bucket list. If I made one I would hurry through it. Afraid I made a list in case I die soon. Which is what it is essentially. How many of us go off and check items off on a bucket list? Why would we even make one? Why is it a bucket? Before we kick the bucket? Why do we say this? Is that even right? You could also look at a bucket list as a list we will never do. One we make that we feel we don’t have to hurry and complete as we have control of the inevitable. We think we won’t kick the bucket and we have time that we have a way to keep it from happening. Do we? No. That’s why we do them.

I know I don’t have control but I don’t live my life like I do. I live and am stuck in my head. I get stuck in my head. I have to step away really far to see it. Disconnect a little to reconnect. I have to apparently fall. Feel centered again. Grounded. It takes falling from a plane for me. Or it did for this. It was too extreme for me. Losing my father was too much. It tilted me out of balance too much. I was starting to sleep and avoid. I was falling and feeling like I wasn’t going to be ok when I fell. I was hanging on to something big. That big thing I can’t solve. Not the why did he die? But the what now? Who am I without my dad? Who was I anyway? I was just starting to feel a close connection with the universe which is a close connection to myself? They feel the same to me. And then my universe imploded in my mind. I lost my way. Because the one person who I felt kept me on my path is gone now. I have to dig deeper to find my way. To remember.

I look back and watch the videos and see the pictures and it feels like it didn’t happen. It was too fast. I can’t come up with a word to describe it. It takes several words because I displayed all emotions in the emotions flash card box. Fear. Brave. Sad. Happy. Exhilarated. Anxious. Angry. Embarrassed. Lust. I can’t describe the actual fall. Just all the moments up to it and after. In between just nothing. Free form emotion. Free for a minute. Light and unburdened. The only word is falling. I was falling.

It felt intimate, sitting inside a little plane on the floor facing each other I was told to put my foot between his legs and his legs were going to go around me. Facing each other while flying in the air to then attach to him to fall from a plane. I cried. He tapped my foot and gave me a thumbs up. I saw him say, you good? I said my dad died and I was so sad. That he would have loved this. He nodded and said he understood. Then looked out the window. Then back to me. Then smiled. Then said. Turn around and get on your knees….then he buckled us together and pulled me from the plane. He said just put your right foot right here next to mine. And then we were gone. Just like that. Complete trust in this stranger behind me. Complete trust in myself?

Not a single word can describe falling from a plane other than how I feel after falling and being ok. I feels like when you spin in circles fast and then stop and you feel like you might fall and finally you are not spinning in your head anymore. Everything looks and feels clearer after it stops. You can see straight again. See that path. At first I wonder off to the right as your body was just spinning to the right for so long it felt the natural pull to the right. Until you stop. Then the natural veer to the right resolves and you can go forward. You aren’t so dizzy with confusion. Lost. But that was the days following the fall from a plane. The actual fall. Nothing. Just nothing for once. He had to tap me twice to get me to let go. When I did. It worked. For a few seconds I carried nothing with me. No weight. No loss. No fear. I was scared to death but brave looks like fear for me. I felt nothing but the fall. The let go and the fall. The not hanging on. The fall. That’s all.

I am unlost again. Grounded. I fell and was ok. Not calm, uncalm, but not as anxious. I was struggling with significant loss. Not just my present loss of my father but grief pulls up all loss. It pulled all my losses to the surface. Some still painful: some I feel guilt for still feeling grief of the loss. Because I grew through the loss and gained. So why bring it back to the surface. As a reminder? Look, you did this before and grew through it and you can do it again. And again. It’s nearly impossible to find any potential growth from the loss of your dad but I once thought I would not find growth in the loss of a child I thought was coming. An image. I once grieved the idea and image of what expecting parents see and hope for. Then to be told your child has different needs. Then to feel like you lost something feels like guilt and shame when my gain was so significant I can’t even describe it to this day. No one needs to know really anyway. I feel special for having her. It makes no sense for me to have a child that requires the patience of what? A saint they say. Yet do we really have patience? I don’t. I just don’t show it. I am almost always on the verge of losing my shit when my name is called or her shoe is finally tied. I push her. I demand more from her than I probably should but I know she is part me and will want to be independent so I have to be sure she doesn’t burn an entire building Dow while making food in the microwave. I know I can get through my dads death when o look back at the loss I got through once but am revisiting today to help me feel like I did it once.

Why fall from a plane? It was the most extreme thing I could think of to do. And it worked. I didn’t feel desperate I was feeling just done. Like I could lay down and sleep and be ok just laying down and sleeping. But I have a lot to do and just can’t grief sleep all day. Just a few. Just enough that I felt pulled to the right and out of balance. Lost again off my trail I’ve picked to be on. It’s ok to wonder off to the right sometimes and be lost in the woods and not on the trail. That’s how we find us again. That’s how I find me again. That trust in myself and the universe again.