I can’t breath. I can’t think. I actually can’t feel anything at all, my mind is completely numb and incapable of functioning. I am 13,500 feet up in the air and I just willingly jumped, or rather fell/was pushed, out of a perfectly functioning airplane. For just a few seconds there is nothing, absolutely nothing. Then it all comes rushing in – the wind, the sun, the speed, the falling, the weightlessness, the ground, the sky, the gear I am wearing. I have never in my life experienced so much stimuli hitting me all at the same time – it is amazing and overwhelming awesomeness. Until I look at the video taken of me skydiving, that is.
“OMG do I seriously look that awful in real life?” This is obviously said to myself, as everyone at Triangle Skydiving Center in Louisburg, NC is merely interested in helping me celebrate that I just experienced my first tandem jump (skydiving attached to an instructor behind me). The jumpsuit is definitively unflattering, with the straps highlighting all the least complementary physical aspects of myself. The goggles make me look even more bug-eyed than normal. The angles of the video are intentionally shot from an upward angle since the videographer has to get to the ground before you, she goes first. The wind? Oh yes, moving the skin on my face around is bizarre looking too, but that happens to everyone. “OMG do I seriously look that awful in real life?,” I repeat to myself. I am genuinely trying to ride the wave of, “I’m so awesome because I just did this” because it’s true, but it is hard to focus on that when I see what I’m looking at. It is a rude awakening. Yes, the conditions of the jump are not something I experience in real life, but babe, you’ve got work to do (p.s. these photos are 3 of the best of 300).
I decide that I am going to go again, and I am going to pay for another video. And it will be different. I pay for the next jump that day, there’s a major discount if you do, and the wheels in my head start spinning. It takes another week for things to start really coming together. I am writing a Letter to Will, and it sparks a thought – almost 9 months until my birthday, almost 80lbs to lose…what if I schedule my next jump near my birthday and make a plan to change my health for the better by then? And, what if I were to write about it like I have been writing in my Letters to Will? I began to formulate a plan…
yearlongexperiment 