To Fall or to Fly?

3,000 miles away from home I was sitting in the cafeteria talking about my life so far after I came to Villanova. My friend was sitting across the table as we exchanged stories about the things that had happened since we moved away from home. I had turned my laundry pink once, he bought the wrong milk at the grocery store, stupid things. However, as we started talking he told me that he hadn’t found his place at Villanova yet, and to be honest, neither had I. It seemed everyone else had already found their group of friends and all the clubs they wanted to join. I felt lost. I was missing home, my highschool boyfriend left me, my friends were all off at college, and I was in another state by myself trying to figure out who I was or who I was supposed to be. It felt like a crisis. Then across the table I hear my friend say that he was going skydiving the upcoming weekend. “I’ll go!” I yelled. He laughed it off and said that everyone says they’ll go skydiving but they never do. I went back to my dorm and bought the ticket within 20 minutes.

13,000 feet up I watched everyone fall out of the plane in front of me. One by one 10 people fell out of the cargo door as I was left for last. When it was my turn to jump my instructor yelled into my ear “Just relax, let yourself fall out”. My legs dangled off the side of the plane, I was only attached to my instructor, and then all of a sudden we were falling. At first I couldn’t make sense of which was was up or which way was down, all I could feel was the wind against my face. I started to relax and look around the sky, and it was breathtaking.  I could see all its blue and gray colors in stark contrast to the white of the clouds, floating just above the earth, green and muddy. We pulled the parachute and floated through the clouds — literally. And as we were going through them I felt a sense of relief, like a weight had been taken off my shoulders. I had been so preoccupied with what my future could or could not be that I forgot to focus on the present. I was abruptly awoken from this cathartic experience when I realized we were feet from the ground, my legs started moving as if to run and we made a swift and perfect landing until I fell to the ground steps later. Despite my rocky finish, I started to look at my situation in a new light. I decided then and there to make more of my life and to focus more on the present and what life has to offer. I put the past behind me, or at least I jumped very far away from it. And I knew that when I fell out of that plane, I wasn’t falling, I was flying.