Why I Had to Jump in New Zealand

“Any advice?” I wonder if the man I’m speaking to can hear the wobble in my voice. I imagine my eyes are coated in a shiny sheen of madness, but he must be used to that by now.

Before, I’d asked him, “How many times have you done this?”

The answer: hundreds.

With an answer like that, his advice probably hardly applies to me.

But then, if he’s done this hundreds of times, then he’s also guided hundreds of others through this.

“Jump on one,” he says. “Don’t hesitate. The longer you wait, the harder it will be.”

Yep, that makes sense to me. Nothing else does, but overthinking = bad seems pretty straightforward.

“And–“

I lean forward. Yes, I need that and…

“Look at the bridge.” He waves a hand at the bridge I drove over to deliver us here. Cars stream over it even now. “Don’t look down, and jump toward that bridge.”

I give a nervous laugh. It’s the only kind of laugh I’m currently capable of.

“Ready?” He pats the towel around my ankles.

Yes, a towel. He placed a blue towel on the ground, put my ankles together on top of it, and then rolled each end up and in. A strap, like the size of a ratchet strap, went around the towel and then around and around between my ankles. That strapped into another strap with two carabiners. I was also wearing a hip harness like the kind they put on me at the rec center climbing wall as a kid. An emergency rope connected that to the main strap, but it isn’t supposed to used. Instead the hand towel and strap would be all that stopped me from plunging headfirst in to the Kawarau River below.

“I guess so.”

My heart is beating a thousand times per second. He pulls me to my feet, which I can hardly move, inching one foot forward at a time. I hold onto the bar beside me, knuckles white.

“Hang your toes over the edge,” he says.

This is where my heart nearly stops. I’d told myself I’d be fine as long as I didn’t look down. My furiously pounding heart might disagree, but not looking down–refusing to look down–feels like my only lifeline. It feels like far more of a lifeline than the flimsy thing wrapped around my ankles.

But I can hardly put my toes over the edge without looking down. I would hate standing here regardless, but standing on a precipice with your legs bound feels far more precarious. I feel off balance. If I start to tip or lose my balance, I can’t catch myself–not with my ankles trussed like a deer.

I glance down, pinning my eyes to the platform and inching forward. I pretend there’s nothing beyond my toes, letting my vision blur. Below, the river rushes past, lending to the blur.

“You have to let go of the bar.”

Frick, I very much do not want to let go of the bar.

I’m wearing my favorite black merino wool shirt. I found it here in New Zealand at a thrift shop for $7 and I wore it rafting and I wore it on the Milford Track. It’s become synonymous with adventure. I knew I was going to wear it today, and I paired it with my black leggings because the outfit makes me feel like a super hero. I suck in a deep breath and I force my fingers to release one at a time. I feel his reassuring grip on the back of my harness, but it is hardly reassuring enough.

“Wave to the camera.”

I follow instructions, looking back toward Curve, who whoops. He has his phone out filming me. It feels like this isn’t happening, like the moment about to come is not really coming. This is a dream. The way I can’t quite feel my extremities lends credence to the dream theory.

“Beauty,” he says, a smile in the word. This is every day, every moment, for him. He could do this in his sleep, but he smiles at me, says kind, excited words to me. I can’t remember a single one, except these: “On one.”

On one.

He starts with five, then adds, “Bend your knees.”

I do, crouching down as though I’m about to spring forward. I see the car bridge arching across the river. It’s like a montage, each image coming faster–the path to this moment. The path to one.

It’s New Zealand, so even before I left, the most common question was: “are you going to bungy jump?”

“Of course not,” I told everyone. “I have no desire to throw myself off a bridge.”

“Never.”

“No way.”

“I hate heights.”

“That’s not for me.”

And it is true. Well, maybe not all of it.

There is something that happens to me in high places. Maybe it happens to everyone–I don’t know. I only know how it happens to me.

First, I walk or stand along an edge, the bottom falling away. And I think about all the stupid things that could happen, like stubbing my toe and going over, or sneezing and going over, or swatting at a bee and going over. I think about all the unconscious ways I could pitch myself over the edge, like thoughtfully (and thoughtlessly) stepping to the side to allow someone to pass me and getting too close to the edge and slipping away.

Then, I sit or I stand and hold on to the railing or a tree trunk and I look at the drop. Not too closely–I never lean way over the edge. But I look. I look at my feet or my hands, whatever is closest to the edge, and I think about how easy it would be to just…jump.

So easy.

And so irreversible.

There is the tiniest sliver of me that imagines doing it. Imagines falling. Imagines hitting the bottom. Not because I want to die, but because I’m looking at dying. One tiny, simple motion stands between me and death. I could do it. I haven’t, obviously. And I never plan to, but I could. And that is a terrifying, intoxicating thought.

So when I say that I have no desire to throw myself off a bridge, I am telling the truth. But there’s a tiny sliver of me that fears that I can’t guarantee it will always be the truth forever.

See, terrifying.

For months, it was true. I had no desire to bungy jump. In fact, I hate heights. I really do. I hate the fear, the risk, and the knife-edge of that twisted allure.

But most of all, I hate that I’m afraid of heights.

Two weeks prior to this moment…to this moment when a man on a bridge beside me is saying, “Four, Three…”

Two weeks prior, my grandfather wanted to watch some bungy jumpers, so I brought him here. It was the first time I’d ever seen a bungy jumper, and I walked in certain that I had no interest in doing something like this. Ever.

“I’ll do it if you do it,” my grandpa joked.

I said nothing.

I watched on the big screen inside the building as a man stood on the edge. I imagined myself in his shoes and terror swamped my stomach like a massive tidal wave. I felt my fingers trembling, my breath coming short. I was him, looking down. Falling.

I felt sick at the thought, sweat prickling my body as my fear grew. I wasn’t even on the edge, wasn’t even perched there as that man was, and I still felt trembly.

Then, he jumped.

And I fell too.

I always thought that the end part of bungy jumping must be fun, the part where you’re bouncing around on the end of a rubber band. Like jumping on the trampoline.

But the rest of it–the jump, the free fall, the anticipation–was petrifying.

And suddenly I wanted to do it. Not because I wasn’t afraid. Not even because I thought it would be fun. But because I was afraid of it.

There have been times in my life where I didn’t do something because I was afraid. Afraid of pain, afraid of humiliation, afraid of confusion, afraid of my limits. But I had rewritten so many stories in New Zealand. I jumped in the ocean to swim with dolphins, the water stretching for thousands of feet below me, cold and dark. I hiked the Copland track even though I was terrified of the idea of hiking back in the rain and misjudging the river crossings. I dangled from a wire bridge by a harness and carabiner, hands up, as a waterfall thundered sixty feet past me and down to the bottom of the stream bed. I joined a band of kiwis on a back county trek over the Southern Alps and rafted a river for the first time since my age was single digits. I bought a car on my own. I learned to drive on the left side of the road. I lost my phone in a waterfall and had to navigate to my next destination without it…in the dark.

So many of those things had given me the same twinges of fear. The fear of doing something irreversible. The same feeling of panic blooming like a blood red flower beneath my breastbone. But that’s right and wrong. Because my fear didn’t feel like I was full of something. There was no flower taking up that space. Instead, it was a balloon, slowing inflating between my ribs. Nothingness spreading. My fear felt like emptiness. As if I weren’t enough. And if I’m not enough, then nothing ever will be.

“I’ll do it,” I told my grandfather. “I’ll jump.”

He laughed and we left and I thought I’d be relieved that no one had believed me. That no one would hold me to it. But instead I felt haunted. I was afraid. And being afraid was no longer a reason that I would validate to stop myself from doing something.

I woke up every morning since thinking about it, feeling my heart rate jump while lying in my bed. The fear of heights, the fear of jumping. The fear of not doing it.

I could not forget it. So I didn’t let myself forget it.

And here I am, my heart in my throat, my palms clammy. My lungs constricted as though caged.

I stare at the car bridge. I tremble, my knees bent. I don’t take my eyes off the bridge. I suck in a last breath. I’m doing it, I think a thousand times in the space of a single second. I’m not hesitating. I’m not dragging this out. He said to jump on one so I’m jumping on ONE.

And he says it.

And I jump.

I reach for the car bridge.

And I fall.

I don’t remember every moment of it. In reality I am in free fall for __ seconds. I shouldn’t have had enough time to think at all, but I do remember thinking. I remember falling and thinking. Thinking this: smiling when you’re upset tricks your brain into thinking you’re happy and I need to tell my brain I’m having fun not dying so I should give an excited shout.

And I try to whoop, but that cage around my lungs is really freaking tight, so it sounds a lot more like a croak and scream rolled into one so I cut that out real quick.

Then, it is fun. I’m not free falling. The bungy is stretching, slowing me down. And I bounce, shooting back up and coming down again. I smile and I wave and I stretch my hands out like I’m flying even though I’m just falling slowly. I feel like I have all the time in the world.

And I did it. I did it. I DID IT.

I can’t think anything else except that I am so proud of myself for having done it and also that I really don’t need to do it again. I’m not addicted. I’m still definitely afraid of heights. But I am brave and courageous and enough. I jumped not in spite of my fear.

But because of it.

And that means everything to me.