When will I ever get this chance again? you will think. Your adrenaline will begin to pump, and you'll be both terrified and excited at the thought of crossing this experience off of your bucket list. You've always wanted to, just to prove to yourself that you can, and to feel the "indescribable" sensation that others have tried to recall to you. Why the hell not? you'll decide. You know yourself well enough to know that you'd never back out after giving someone your word, so you try to focus on the great things you've heard about skydiving instead of the risks. Hint: do not google statistics about injuries and fatalities.
The night before:
If you can skydive for the first time without being anxious, you're probably a psychopath. With that being said, toss and/or turn at least five times per hour, while playing scenarios of you plummeting to the Earth over and over again in your head. Harp on the part of skydiving that you think will be the scariest. My preference was to panic over the process of exiting the plane and how terrifying free falling must feel, but to each his own. (This step can be extended and may last as long as several weeks before your scheduled dive).
The morning of:
Definitely don't eat much breakfast. You probably should, but you probably won't be able to stomach it. If you're smart, you scheduled your skydive for somewhere not too far from where you live or are staying; if you are me, then you scheduled it for a city three whole hours away, and now have an incredibly anxious car ride to continue thinking over what you're about to do.
Upon arriving at the skydiving center:
You've already filled out a number of forms, essentially signing your life away, but here you'll probably have to fill out even more. You'll read over the mandatory warnings about the risks involved with the extreme sport, and you will wish that you hadn't. You'll try not to look nervous, but you're having the panic attack of your life inside. The staff will sit you down to watch a brief video, and you'll become afraid of actually exiting the plane, instead of just being afraid of the aftermath. You'll glance nervously around at the other brave souls about to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, and you'll wonder why they don't seem as nervous as you feel.
When meeting your tandem partner:
He's the expert, you think, and he is-- he instantly realizes that you're nervous. He jokes with you, and suits you up, explaining how each piece of gear works. You'll feel a little bit more at ease, but this lasts for approximately five minutes until it's time to board a bus to the nearest small air strip.
The bus might seem really hot, and you'll begin to feel claustrophobic. Your adrenaline is through the roof, and while anxious, you're also beginning to feel determined and ready to get out of the cramped bus and into the open sky.
In the plane:
As the plane rises higher and higher in the sky, you'll be too awestruck by the view to worry for a bit. Your tandem partner will tell you how high you are every few thousand feet, and you'll soon reach your destination height of 14,000 feet. You're in incredibly tight quarters, straddling a bench, smooshed between your tandem guide and the person in front of you, and you'll feel elbows and knees knocking into you as the guide begins to hook your harness to his.
At 14,000 feet:
The door on the side of the plane will open, and every nerve in your body will be on end. Nothing has prepared you for this, and nothing could. The first pair sit on the edge of the open plane, as icy air licks your face. You realize that this is one of your friends, and stare helplessly as she falls, more than jumps, into the cold gusts. As soon as they are in free-fall, the next pair follows their lead, and soon you are inching your way towards the door, your tandem guide behind you. You get into position: head back against his shoulder, arms holding on to your harness, legs wrapped under the plane. Before you even have time to consider what is about to happen, you are flipping out of the plane, your stomach dropping for a split second, before you reach terminal velocity.
In free fall:
The air will beat against your skin harder than you expected, but not in a way that hurts. It will remind you of a jet in a hot tub that bears against your back, or of holding your hand out of the window on the freeway, only for it to be met with incredible force. You won't feel like you're falling, so much as that you're floating. You will realize afterward that you were falling for nearly a minute, but while it is taking place, it feels like only a few seconds. You're screaming your lungs out, but no one can hear you. You find that somehow comforting, rather than strangely dark.
After the parachute opens:
You'll be very thankful that it did indeed open. Your fear is completely gone, and you are given control of the parachute, to glide it wherever you'd like. You spin in circles, spiraling downwards, laughing uncontrollably. You're over the ocean, and below you there are massive schools of fish, like shadows dancing beneath the water. Your guide points out various parts of the landscape, and you feel as if you've never lived more "for the moment" than you are right then.
Landing:
Sooner than you'd like, the guide takes back control of the parachute and prepares you for landing. Rather than a gentle descent, you swoop downwards quickly, letting out something between a laugh and a scream. He reminds you to lift your feet, so that they don't get injured, and pulls the parachute back up at the precise moment to land you standing upright. You hug him out of sheer delight of being alive, and are giddy with joy to feel the land beneath your feet. You run to your friends, unable to do anything but grin, laugh, and retell stories about your jump for the remainder of the afternoon.
It should go without saying that this is merely a chronicle of my own adventure skydiving, and that anyone else's jump may vary drastically from my own. I was, however, lucky enough to skydive in Mission Beach a few weeks ago, with Skydive Mission Beach-- a company I would highly recommend. I hope that this post might coax a few people to join the skydiving club, particularly those living with anxiety, like me. If anything, it showed me that I am capable of overcoming anything, and that the things that give me anxiety are rarely as worth worrying about as I make them out to be. Had I not agreed to skydive, I would have never seen the most beautiful section of Australian coast from the air--something I would certainly regret for the rest of my life. Get out there & do it.
