The door to the plane slid open and a gush of air swept in pushing me back.
I looked out the door and saw colors of green and brown mashed into each other.
My feet dangled over the edge of the small propeller plane 14,000 feet up in the air
and my instructor pointed at me with his GoPro strapped to his wrist and asked,
“Any last words?!?”
“Yeah…”, I yelled into the wind,
”I hope my parachute opens!”
Weightlessness.
That’s all you feel when you jump out of an airplane at that height.
Your body is in total free fall as the plane above you fades away
and the wind rushes past your face and arms.
You feel your heart beat out of your chest and adrenaline pumps throughout your entire body
making you feel nothing but pure excitement.
At 22 years old,
this was the best birthday gift I could have ever wanted.
Then, my instructor reached across our chest
to pull on our chutes and suddenly…
…nothing.
I felt the thrust of the parachute,
but not nearly as strong as it should have been.
I noticed we were slowing down and when I looked to my sides,
I could still see my instructors arms spread out!
I forced my head to look back
pushing against the wind and I saw a crumpled parachute
flailing behind in the wind.
I felt my instructor panic even through all of the wind
I could hear him cursing and scrambling behind me.
The adrenaline in my body was quickly replaced with fear.
I began praying for whatever was wrong to fix itself
or for all of this to just stop.
We were now spiraling out of control like an uneven washer machine
tumbling and shaking violently as we picked up more speed towards the ground.
We spun so fast,
one of my shoes flew off my foot.
I looked back at my instructor
again hoping he’d be able to get us out of this somehow.
I saw his hand on the emergency parachute and he pulled hard on it.
Our last lifeline failed.
The second parachute,
the one that was supposed to save us and be used for instances like these,
had caught on to the original one
and was now tangled together.
As I stared down at the earth,
I saw the ground approaching faster and closer
realizing that we weren't going to make it.
I knew that I would hit the ground hard
and I knew I’d feel the impact and my body
crushing into pieces as we smacked into the ground.
I listened helplessly to the flapping parachute
and I thought about my family’s reaction
having to witness their loved one in a tragic accident
right in front of them.
And then…
…impact.
Immediately I felt an unbearable searing sharp pain fill my entire body.
I tried gasping for air, but I couldn’t.
I tried to move my legs, but I couldn’t.
I couldn’t feel them or my neck.
Luckily, I still had feeling in my fingers and could feel the parachute on top of me.
I slowly pushed the parachute off
and noticed that we landed beside a lake
and that my legs were submerged.
Moving back and forth,
I realized I was still harnessed to my instructor.
He was blue in the face but looked like he was still breathing
I couldn’t tell for sure, and
for a moment,
I felt guilt consume me feeling responsible for this man’s life.
I tried to grab onto my instructor
and shook him as I somehow managed to scream out,
“Please don't die! Wake up!”
Slowly, I saw his eyes followed by groans of agonising pain.
I tried to ask him if he was okay,
but it was too intolerable
and he was too much in pain to form any words.
We both couldn't speak and
we could barely move but somehow,
we were alive.
In the distance,
I heard shouting and running footsteps.
Three strangers quickly drove their golf buggy over and separated us.
I didn't know who the people were,
but I can see from their clothes and field around me
that we landed on a golf course.
All of a sudden, I heard some people yelling my name.
I tried to look over to them,
but I couldn't move my neck or upper body.
A few family members had run all the way from the airstrip
and had seen the entire accident unfold.
As I was hysterically sobbing in immense pain,
I got lifted into the back of an ambulance
unable to move my body.
All I could hear was my Mum yelling out that she loved me.
My senses were going wild
and my mind was working in overdrive,
the sounds, the smells,
people rushing around me,
where was I?
Was this real?
I felt like I was looking down on myself in the scene of a movie,
lights in my face,
needles and tubes coming out of my arms and mouth.
I was in the hospital!
Suddenly,
my whole body was consumed by pain like I never had before,
then, I heard a nurse say it,
“parachute incident”.
I was sucked back into reality
as all the memories and emotions of what had just happened
hit me at once.
I looked to my left to see my parents holding my hands
telling me everything would be okay,
then to my right, I see a nurse,
she was speaking and I was trying my hardest
to focus through the pain onto what she was telling me.
She was reeling off m injuries, I heard her say,
”broken spine, torn neck, and cracked ribs”!
Then, my mind suddenly flipped from my own injuries...
My instructor!
Where was he? How was he?
To my relief, I learned he was also alive and stable.
I lay there in the pitch black darkness,
listening to the sounds of beeping, snoring and
nightmarish cries of pain around me.
I then realised
the beeping was coming from the heart monitors
and the cries of pain were my own.
I was in agony,
my body was on fire and
my back was immersed in severe stabbing pains.
The worst thing about that night
was the relentless visions.
Every time I closed my eyes
I had to relive the ordeal from the day before.
The falling sensation,
the sounds of wind rushing past my ears,
the panicked scrambling of my instructor trying to open the chute,
the ground flying towards me!
It was so vivid I would forget where I was in an instant to
again wake in a dark room.
I wanted to end things there and make it stop,
I pleaded with the nurses to give me more medication but
they refused.
I took a long and painful 4 months for my body to recover but,
that was the least of my worries,
people would approach me like “oh,
great you’re fully recovered”
"you're so lucky to have made a full recovery" but,
I wasn’t and I hadn't.
People couldn’t see what I was going through on the inside,
they could only see what was on the outside.
My mind felt broken
and I couldn’t see how I was ever going to recover.
I stayed in my room at my parent’s and hardly left.
I shut myself off from family members
and would yell at my parents if they tried to comfort me.
I refused to see my friends
and didn’t post anything on social media.
I was a total recluse.
My depression came as a massive shock to the people who knew me.
I always had an extroverted zest for life.
You’d never see me without a smile.
When people learned that I was depressed
they’d simply tell me to just ‘be happy’ again,
as if there was some sort of switch.
It doesn’t work that way.
I became filled with such self-hatred, mourning, and exhaustion.
I spent my days lying on my bed with a neck and back brace
feeling hopeless and doomed,
trying to numb the pain with intense medication.
I couldn't even recognize myself.
I was so disengaged from life
that I hardly knew what time or what day it was.
Guilt and fear
wore itself around me like a suffocating blanket
that I just couldn’t get away from.
I hit an all-time low.
I'd grown so tired of the self-loathing, and the fear and the agonising pain
that I contemplated ending things.
One more second of living life the way I currently was
just didn’t seem worth it.
To go from life-of-the-party to the walking wounded was soul-destroying.
What had I become?
I knew my family and friends would be devastated but,
better I wasn't around anymore than go another day
dealing with my problems.
Being alive meant being a burden
to me and to my family.
That’s when I thought back to that day and how guilty I felt for my family.
They watched it all
and have now had to go through all of this with me,
how could I possibly put them through any more?
Funnily enough,
it was YouTube that motivated me to change my life.
I started searching for people with my symptoms
and I found people, just like me,
talking about similar experiences.
It was so mind-blowing to know I wasn’t alone.
I was literally
watching people who had survived all the trials that I was currently facing.
I dealt with the years of rehab,
years of therapy,
years of pain, mistakes, and failures.
But during that time, I was determined.
I was determined that one day I will share my story
and hopefully inspire people,
just like I was inspired to get back up and keep going.
We must all value the life we have been given and
live it to the fullest,
because you just don't know what's around the corner.
Never in a million years did I think I could become the person I am today.
I’m getting back to my colorful, wacky, happy self.
And I can firmly say,
"I am a person who truly lives life to the full."