Maybe Now (Maybe #2)(5)
Ain’t no place I’d rather be
I got you and you got me
You set me free
I was sitting low
I didn’t know where I could go
Thought the bottom was the ceiling
No remedy to heal it
A Hail Mary to a sin
A new start to an end
You set me free
Shook the dust right off me
Locked up tight you found the key
And now I see
Ain’t no place I’d rather be
I got you and you got me
You set me free
I stand completely silent after the song ends. There are tears running down my cheeks, and it isn’t even a sad song. But the meaning behind the lyrics Ridge wrote after falling asleep next to me last night mean more to me than any other lyrics he’s ever written. And even though I understood what he was saying this morning when he said he feels free for the first time, I didn’t realize just how much I identified with what he was feeling.
You set me free, too, Ridge.
I pull the headphones out of my ears, even though I want to put the song on repeat and listen to it for the rest of the day. On my way out of the bathroom, I catch myself singing the song out loud in the empty hallway with a ridiculous smile on my face.
“Ain’t no place I’d rather be. I got you and you got me…”
I think about death every minute of every hour of every day of my life. I’m almost positive I think about death more than the average person. It’s hard not to when you know you’ve been given a fraction of the time almost everyone else on earth has been given.
I was twelve when I started to research my diagnosis. No one had ever really sat me down and explained to me that Cystic Fibrosis came with an expiration date. Not an expiration date on the illness, but an expiration date on my life.
Since that day, at only twelve-years-old, I look at life completely differently than I looked at it before. For example, when I’m in the cosmetics section of a store, I look at the age cream and know that I’ll never need it. I’ll be lucky if my skin even starts to wrinkle before I die.
I can be in the grocery section and I’ll look at the expiration dates on food and wonder which one of us will last longer. Me or the mustard?
Sometimes I receive invitations in the mail for a wedding that’s still a year out, and I’ll circle the date on the calendar and wonder if my life will last longer than the couple’s engagement.
I even look at newborn babies and think of death. Knowing that I’ll never live to see a child of my own grow into adulthood has erased any desire to ever have a child.
I’m not a depressed person. I’m not even sad about my fate. I accepted it a long time ago.
Most people live their lives as if they’ll live until they’re one hundred years old. They plan their careers and their families and their vacations and their futures as if they’ll be around for all of it. But my thoughts work differently than most people’s, knowing that I don’t have the option to pretend I’ll live until I’m 100 years old. Because I won’t. Based on the current state of my health, I’ll be lucky to live another ten years. And that’s precisely why I think about death every minute of every hour of every day of my life.
Until today.
Until the moment I jumped out of the plane and I looked down on an Earth that seemed so insignificant that I couldn’t help but laugh. And I couldn’t stop laughing. The entire time we were falling, I laughed hysterically until I started crying because the experience was beautiful and exhilarating and far exceeded my expectations. The entire time I was plummeting toward the earth at over one hundred miles per hour, I didn’t once think about death. I could only think of how lucky I was to be able to feel that alive.
Jake’s words kept repeating in my head as I was pushing against the wind. “This is living!”
He’s right. This is the most I’ve ever lived, and I want to do it again. We’ve only been on the ground for all of a minute. Jake’s landing was impeccable, but I’m still harnessed to him and we’re sitting on the ground, my feet out in front of me as I try to catch my breath. I appreciate that he’s given me a quiet moment to soak it all in.
He begins to unlatch us and stands up. I’m still sitting when he walks around in front of me and blocks the sun with his height. I look at him and am slightly embarrassed that I’m still crying, but not enough to try to hide it.
“Well?” he says, holding out his hand. “How was it?”
I take his hand, and he pulls me up as I use my other hand to wipe the tears away from my cheeks. I sniff and then laugh. “I want to do it again.”
He laughs. “Right now?”
I nod vigorously. “Yeah. That was incredible. Can we do it again?”
He shakes his head. “The plane is booked for the rest of the afternoon. But I can put you on the schedule for my next day off.”
I smile. “I would love that.”
Jake helps me remove my harness, and I hand him my helmet and goggles. We go inside and I change out of my gear. When I make it back to the front counter, Jake has printed out pictures and downloaded a video of the skydive for me.
“I sent it to the email address you have on file,” he says, handing me a folder with the pictures inside it. “Is the address on your form your correct home address?”