Honey, It’s Just A Freefall

Sometimes you pray so hard for something that you can't see it going any other way. You call out to what’s higher to guide you toward what you want, and you forget that it can see if that thing you want is actually not what you need.

When I was 18, my biggest wish in the entire world was to go skydiving on my European high school graduation trip. My parents made me sign a napkin, written explicitly in black Sharpie, promising that under no circumstances would I do so.

I went to Europe with seven countries ready to be explored and carried the one thing I couldn't do as extra baggage. It piled up so much that I decided to run off a cliff and paraglide in Switzerland. Much to my dismay, that wasn't enough adrenaline. I was bored the second the cliff part was done, still 10,000 feet in the air, wondering when it gets fun again.

That napkin became more than just a napkin. It was a prison of my own adrenaline. Then it became a taunter of what happens when you don't just do things in life, when you wait. The no skydiving now almost became a no skydiving ever when my brain surgery came around. All the cancer scare drama, and all I could ask my oncologist and surgeon was, “When can I skydive?” I was eventually cleared for a birthday jump, just no outer space. Honestly, that was really tough to hear. Still healing.

I just had a great flashback to hanging out with my girlfriends over the summer. They were talking about weird drugs LA people take. I got uncomfortable, as that is not my forte, and like an idiot, I tried to insert myself into the conversation. I uttered just about the coolest words ever spoken on this earth: "If adrenaline was a drug, I'd buy it." You best believe I get reminded of that every day I wake up. Today especially.

Almost two years ago, I jumped out of a plane with Mr. International on my 20th birthday to celebrate the fact that I took the clearance for one skydiving jump and turned it into two that year. Now, with the liberty of one jump still cleared, I have signed myself up for 25 more, to be done by December. I will walk out of college with a finance and dance degree, a skydiving license, and plenty more weird cargo I've picked up along the way.

Today, I started the license process and therefore made my last two jumps with an instructor. Even with him, the stakes certainly did not make it just a freefall. Yeah, that's right. "Just" a freefall.

My instructor and I figure out real soon that we can speak Spanish with each other, and I guess, in honor of keeping the Spain skydiving feels alive, he decides to tell me everything in Spanish. Even in the calmest conversations with friends I've had for years now, I am anxious about getting every word right. You best believe this added a fun variable to the already variables-stacked-on-variables equation of skydiving.

I soon find out my instructor, David, is a seven-time international world champion. It fits. I'm getting my skydiving license for three reasons:

1) To fall through the sky while hugging and kissing Mr. International

2) To keep conquering my fucking brain surgery

3) To see every place I travel from the sky

The international element was needed and admired. I'm not sure if this was just to glaze me so I don't cry during the freefall, but David celebrated my Spanish so much. He said, “I never imagined an American could speak Spanish like you, or would even want to.”

As we go up in the plane, I remember what I love so much about this experience: meeting Death. Death has always been a powerful source of Life for me. I really only started living after greeting it at 18. Now, any chance I get to shake its powerful hand and say, If you are ready for me, I have no regrets, and I am so proud of every move I've made, is restorative.

I think about how beautiful radical acceptance is. I'm not in control, I can only do as much as I can, and I have something bigger than me to turn it all over to. The reason I'm not scared to take on extra risk is that I know if Death ever comes for me for real, it will not be my responsibility or my interference with an avoidable outcome. It will be a surrender to what was meant to be all along. That's when you're ready to fly. And as I realize this very thought, I wink out at the farmland through the plane window, and the sun reflects off the water and winks back in agreement.

Now, time for the freefall. Man, it was magnificent. Better than I remembered. David taps me, and I fight to find the golf ball to the right of his pocket. Before I know it, I've nailed pulling the parachute for the very first time. Easy peasy. Now time to steer the canopy... let's just say I'll be going to the gym for more upper body. We get down to landing, and all I can say is increíble. David agrees and gives me a perfect score. I was his 6,556th jump.

Next up, his 6,557th and my last time ever skydiving with an instructor on my back. David says no more talking, and I think, great, no more worrying if I'm understanding his Spanish correctly. But no, it's arm signal time. Because my next jump will be solo, I have to memorize 20 emergency signals, since there's no talking across the air. Arc hand sign, izquierda. Arc hand sign, derecha. Otherwise known as David explaining how I am about to make us do two 360s in the air. Fuck yes.

Then, two fingers straightened. What could that possibly be? Oh, just me traveling at the speed of light, because David showed me what five seconds of straight legs and arms back does to you at 12,000 feet. On the way up, I drilled the routine into my mind, and when it came time to jump out, it was just flawless. We 360'd, we dove at the speed of light, and I still managed to pull the parachute at the perfect altitude: 6,000 feet.

The takeaway: I am capable of anything and everything, and I will never endure stress again. Yeah, right.

No, actually, right, because I just fucking did a ten-step routine while falling through the sky. Sorry, finance and midterms, but you're not getting the best of me anymore. And I'm left with one sensation: lots of variables, so much that could go wrong, yet my mind is free.

There's an update brewing on the sidelines of all this right now, and it's a big one. So huge I can't share it here just yet. But it carries this same exact current, so at the risk of everything, it must be at least briefly mentioned.

I'm being asked to free fall in a significant way. I'm being challenged to see how a prayer I thought needed to be answered a certain way is turning out so different, yet so perfect. Though it is what I know I need, it is like the napkin; it’s tied to a piece of paper that can have the most profound significance if I give it.

Even in the midst of all these new variables, risks, and so much that could go wrong, my mind is freer than I can say it has ever been. And that’s not only the adrenaline talking.