I'm going to meet her today
When I turned 18 my parents bought me a skydive. You take a little lesson, then you jump out of a plane with some parachute bundled up on your back. At first your nervous, then you're in freefall and it's like nothing else. Nothing has ahold of you, not land, nor gravity, nor anything else. It's like you're in orbit, with wind. It's total freedom with no control except when to stop.
We have a mutual friend she and I. He's now become that married guy who tries to hook up his single friends. And since he (like me) only has a few friends this was bound to happen. I thought, hey, a setup, could be fun, can't hurt at least.
Sure, you think you know how things are going to go. Jump out of plane, float around like you see on TV, open chute, land. Cake right? Hell no. There's so much to remember. You have to make yourself not flip around. You have to control the urge to look down. Looking down can kinda hypnotize you, seeing the ground come rushing straight at you. The instructor said "Never look where you're going." Most of all you're supposed to remember to look around at the horizon, move around, enjoy yourself. Freefall doesn't last long.
We exchanged ICQ numbers 2 days ago. I've done little but talk to her in that time. She's stayed up late, and I've gotten up early. I've told her nearly every weirdness about myself that I could think of. The little compulsive quirks. The years I've spent as a shut in. That I don't drive. Sometimes I forget that I'm weird, that most people own pants for example, so I don't mention it, it's my normal. I have only shorts, is showing up in shorts going to be bad? I've told her all this and she still talks to me, she still wants to meet me.
So many things can go wrong. You could just plain forget to open the chute because you're having so much fun. Your chute might get tangled. It might not open at all. You could get lost on the way down. Hit powerlines. If anything goes wrong, you can panic. That makes it so much worse.
I'm trying not to think about things that can go wrong, previous failures. I'm being sure to be me in all that I am. Before I tried to ease people into me, and that just doesn't work. Before I tried to be someone else. Now I am only me. Don't think about it, just act natural. Don't think about where I want it to go, just deal with things when they go wrong, and hope.
I am going to meet her tonight.
I am so afraid
Flying or falling?