“Look before you leap” was something my mom said a lot to me, I’m sure she meant it as a warning, that I should make sure that I was leaping into something safe. I’ve always been a leaper, when I jump in, it’s all in or not at all, and I’ve always looked, but probably not in the way my mom intended. I tend to decide I’m going to leap, then look, mostly out of curiosity, then leap, no matter what I saw.
One of my best childhood friends described her role in our friendship as being the person who follows me around grabbing me by the ankles when I leap to make the trip down at least a little bit slower. She knew me well enough that no warning can prevent me from leaping when I have decided to.
I’ve always had a “why not” attitude. Always believed in living without regrets, not wanting to be saddled with “what ifs”. I can honestly say that the vast majority of my leaps worked out well, when they didn’t they served as lessons, but I don’t regret a single one.
The only leap that has eluded me was a physical one. In my many bouts of depression, I have often had suicidal thoughts, fantasies even. How would it feel to die by X? Psychologists tell me that this sort of morbid curiosity is pretty normal for people like me, but like any fantasy, it needs to remain just that.
I’ve always come back to the one of what it must feel like to jump. Having the final moments be of exhilaration, freedom. I’ve never been tempted to try however, mostly because if the fear of failing. If I were to jump, but something went wrong, I could end up stuck living in a body that has become a prison. It always seemed counter intuitive, in my search for freedom from this life, I could end up even more imprisoned by it.
I’ve thought about a bungee jump, or skydiving, but neither really feels like it would capture that moment of standing on the edge, alone, and letting go. Then I saw this thing called Skyjump. You jump off a building or tower wearing a harness and cable attached to your torso, and fall. This weekend, I’m jumping off a 20 story tower over a river. I will get to have my fantasy without the depression and death side effects. In just a few days, I will finally know how it feels to literally leap.
