What is it like to fall from the tallest buildings and higher? This was a question I frequently found myself contemplating while growing up. The actual thought of the idea frightened me at least as much as the thought intrigued me. I learned at a young age that the only way to face fear is to unequivocally commit to the goal, even when you are terrified. This helped me to achieve one of my greatest ambitions in life, to jump from an airplane.

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As a child, during the summer months my friends and I would seek out cliffs to jump from and land in various bodies of water. Every time we found a cliff that was a greater height than any of the ones before, there was a build-up of anxiety as I would begin my ascent to the top. This would often lead me to improperly place a hand, or a foot, and slip before catching my balance again. It has been found that those who experience anxiety, when in an anxious state, experience disruptive thoughts and feelings as well as impaired cognitive processes.

No matter how high I would climb, even as the endorphins told my body what I was doing was wrong and imposed a feeling of impending death, I felt as though I could never find a high enough cliff to jump from. When I had eventually come to the decision to enlist into the United States Army I was offered the unique opportunity which I had been dreaming of for years, the chance to jump from an airplane in US Army Airborne school. Immediately, thinking about falling from several hundred feet in the air with the trust in my fellow soldiers that they had properly packed my equipment, and that I was properly prepared by the instructors, caused my heart to sink in my chest and I froze. In that instant, I envisioned all of the possible ways that things could ever go wrong, as well as a few irrational ideas. I had been imagining this juncture since I was a child, I had to go through with it as I may never be fortunate enough to come across the occasion to fulfill a lifelong dream, so I accepted the offer and Airborne school was added to the intended training for my personnel contract.

All through the nine weeks of Basic Training the thought of free-falling from the sky lingered just out of my conscious awareness, though my subconscious had not forgotten in the least. After a long day of training from sun up to well beyond sun down, I would lay down at night and would find myself in many diverse dreamscapes focused on falling from exaggerated heights in their varying forms. Waking up all hours of the nights in a panic eventually caused problems in my concentration on training in the first nine weeks before Advanced Individual Training and I ended up injuring my right shoulder, which resulted in two subsequent surgeries later during my enlistment.

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After successfully completing the initial training course in Basic Training, I continued to be further trained in a more refined fashion which accustoms each soldier to the duties which will be performed during their contracted years of service. My MOS, or job, was a 15U, a CH-47D Chinook helicopter maintainer. I was due to be in school in Fort Eustis, Virginia for sixteen weeks, but ended up getting ill around week 12 and was reset to week 8 due to the way the classes were scheduled. When I first arrived to my new post for Advanced Individual Training, the military had enlisted so many aviator maintainers all at the same time that most of the MOS classes had at least a two week wait, most of the Black Hawk maintainers would have to wait ten weeks and more. I was lucky enough to be scheduled for class after only two weeks of staying in the hold barracks. With everything going on I hardly had time to think about the soon to arrive deciding day, that day I would jump from an airplane.

When I had finally graduated from the Advanced Individual Training program and was ready to lastly move on to the long awaited day that I could transfer to Airborne school, I was informed that I would be held for three more weeks further as there were no openings in the current class beginning the time that I had finished training at Fort Eustis. This information destroyed my confidence that I had slowly been building over the previous months as I began working myself up to this daunting task. I was given three weeks of light duty around the barracks which gave me all the time in the world to pour over the weeks to come in my head. Every empty space in my mind suddenly became occupied with all of the situations that I could possibly encounter throughout the course of my ensuing training at Airborne school. For three whole weeks I found myself consumed by doubt, and I had begun to view my undertaking of parachuting from an airplane as something only of my dreams again. It seemed impossible!

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The terror had been brought back to the forefront of my awareness and I was fully conscious of all the effects it was having on my mind and my body. When the idea would capture my attention everything around me would seem to fall behind a curtain of fog and became very hazy. My breathing would become very shallow and rapid, this caused my heart to begin to race as it began to run the whole body-mind system depleted of oxygen. My heart racing would cause me to panic, and I could not break focus on the thought of jumping from the airplane. These attacks would last anywhere from a few brief moments up to several minutes; some days I found myself in and out of these ten and fifteen minute panic attacks from overthinking the future event throughout the entirety of the day, only to find the idea had entranced my subconscious mind in my dream-worlds.

In spite of all the stress I had created for myself, the much anticipated date arrived and I finally found myself in Fort Benning, Georgia. Arriving in Georgia and reporting for duty at my assigned station was so surreal, I was quite literally living my childhood dream! I had worked so hard to make it to this point, and regardless of all the fear, whether rational or irrational, I had to prove to myself that I could accomplish this objective.

The first couple of days were very slow as we became accustomed to the way that the instructors wished for us to operate. Also during those first couple of days we were issued all of our training equipment that we would need during the two weeks of training on the ground. I was teeming with excitement, or trepidation, I'm not quite too certain as to which due to my energy levels being so high that it was difficult to discern which emotions I was actually experiencing. After our training equipment had been distributed in its entirety, it was time to begin training on learning how to safely parachute from an airplane on a static line, and likewise ascertain the knowledge of how to adequately perform a proper landing to ensure the safety of our health.

Airborne School was not easy in any sense or semblance of the word. We were informed that in order for us to move from any point A to point B we had to be running, regardless of the distance being covered. Everywhere we went we were running. As a company, the entirety of all the soldiers in several platoons, we would be jogging at a pace that is commonly referred to as “the Airborne shuffle.” This “shuffle” is a very light jog at the pace of the slowest individuals in the company. We ran miles upon miles upon miles at this pace. The longest I can remember was five miles which we were required to complete in under 45 minutes, the last mile or so we were allowed to finish at our own pace. We would wake up and be in formation and actively taking part in our daily physical training well before the sun ever rose.

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I remember distinctly during a very specific ground training exercise where you are hooked up to a mechanism which mimics the harness and directional sliders for the parachute I had much difficulty maintaining my attention on the instructors, and properly executing the commands due to the intrusive thoughts about what could happen if I failed to fulfill the proper instructions. It took me more attempts than any of the other soldiers before I was cleared for the next portion of training, my inattention due to the fear imposing on my thoughts significantly held me back.
The first two weeks flew by as if they had never existed, as on the third week I found myself sitting with the rest of my company in the pre-jump preparation area. We had been suited up and quickly re-briefed on the past two weeks of training. Now we waiting in a large hangar full of benches where we waited among the other companies that were also completing their week of jumps. So many of us other than just myself were timid as a hare awaiting the departure of the wolf from outside its den, but we were all ready. This is what we had come here to do!

At last, after what seemed like hours, our jump-group was called. I cannot recall exactly how many of us were in each group, but there were at least twenty of us each. As I stood and shuffled to the back ramp of the airplane to board our flight, my knees grew extremely weak. My static line was hooked up and held firmly in my hand. The five jumps that are completed by every attendee of Airborne school are all static-line jumps, this means that there is a cord attached to the jumper's pull-string to deploy the parachute that is clipped to a hard-wired, woven-steel line so that when the jumper exits the aircraft the parachute is deployed automatically without needing to be initiated by the jumper.

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Before I knew it we were in flight en route to the drop zone with the propellers of the airplane roaring with more ferocity than any lion. My entire body and support system had begun to shake to the very core of my being and I began having difficulty maintaining my breath. I was the fifth or sixth jumper in line, and once the first soldier made his move, everyone in front of me would begin to move just the same as everyone behind me, out the door.

The Jump Master gave the ready signal as we came closer to the moment we would all exit the plane to what my body could only imagine as our sure and certain death. The red light clicked over to a brilliant emerald green that beckoned for our next motion, and the Jump Master shouted, “GO, GO, GO!” as we all shuffled out through the door on the side of this massive prop-plane.

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The screaming engines were suddenly obsolete and all I could hear was the rushing of the wind around me as I fell towards the ground. Within three seconds, my parachute fully deployed and I grasped the sliders with all of my might. I looked around and a feeling of ecstasy rushed over my entire body, filling every nook and cranny of my system with elation and joy! The other jumpers falling slowly through the sky at various heights around me, drifting in the wind like giant-green dandelion seeds as they made their way to the ground below them.

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The ground came up a lot quicker than I had imagined, but by this point I was fully prepared for this exact situation. As I made contact with the ground, I perfectly executed the instructions that I had been so well trained with. The parachute that is used in jump school only slows you down enough to safely land on the ground, and when I hit I landed like a dropped sack of potatoes. I released my harness and gathered my gear to begin the half-mile hike to the meeting point.

Taking in my surroundings, I felt more alive than I could ever remember feeling. None of the cliffs that my friends and I had jumped from as children compared to the intensity of the experience of jumping from an airplane. Every cell in my body was pulsating with enthusiasm, I had completed a life-long goal. Even though I was terrified from the very beginning, I devoted myself to an objective and successfully accomplished what I had set out to do. Fear can often times stand in our way, committing to an end result will help guide you through these troubles.

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LOVELAUGHTER&&XHAOS

PALPABLE POPE Ypyskypo Skwyrl, the Y'sas
High Priest, Temple of Appled Thought
Alchemist for Trades

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