There are times we feel in decline. Our luck fails us. Our abilities drop. We feel ourselves falling into bad patterns.
These bad times are nothing compared to a freefall.
When we’re in a freefall, we feel as if we are plunging toward the worst possible version of ourselves, and there is absolutely nothing that can hold back our descent. The good habits, strong relationships, and healthy restraint that ordinarily keep us up have been lost, and nobody is coming to our rescue.
All bridges have burned. All our parachutes have failed to open.
Gravity isn’t only a principle in physics. There’s a feeling we sometimes have that there’s some kind of center of emotional annihilation in our lives, pulling at us relentlessly, even when we seem to be resisting it. If only a few of our supports were to crack, we would be powerless against it.
It’s an emotion of utter helplessness against the inevitable force of self-destruction, but we feel glorious in a way as the wind whips through our hair, and even though we feel the suspicion that we might not survive the experience, in the moment, we know that we are truly alive.
In freefall, there’s a sick kind of exhilaration in the knowledge that there’s nothing left to break our fall… until we hit the absolute bottom.
