Jump

“Okay. We’re going to jump! Are you ready?”

We're on a cliff, looking into an abyss.

"I'm scared." I could see the terror in her eyes.

"I'm scared too. I'll do it if you will." I wasn't sure that I would.

"We'll do it together. Hold my hand."

Let me back up a little.

I’ve always walked through the world with one foot here -in quote “reality”- and the other foot in the mystery; in the world of the spirit. I knew a connection to life that I just assumed everyone felt, but slowly, as I grew up, I learned that wasn’t the case.

It's hard to explain. I've just always known that there was more to this experience than what I got through my senses and I never questioned it.

So.

I was born with a birth defect. Just saying those words now makes me feel shame but I don't know what else to call it. It wasn’t there when I was very young but by age seven my ribs started to grow funny which created a depression in my chest. A sunken chest. Like a pirate. Get it? Kids can be hilarious. I didn’t get it. I certainly didn’t feel like a pirate. That would have been a cool way to play it, but I was =not= cool. I desperately wanted to be cool. Nope. It looked like God himself had given me a really hard punch, knocking the wind out of me. Forever. It gave the impression that I was recoiling from the world.

I was a really smart kid. I always tested off the charts and was very articulate from a young age and because of this my parents coddled me. They let me get away with all kinds of bullshit. I never did homework assignments but because I passed all the tests, I was never punished for my laziness. It's not their fault but to this day, I =love= naps, and if the choice is to take care of something that needs to be handled and taking a nap, nap wins every time.

I wasn't clever enough to fool them, but I think they got a kick out of my creative excuses. I could sense this and used every opportunity to take advantage. Gus the ghost practiced violin =for= you, you say. They were proud to have such a bright child. I knew all kinds of facts and things about facts and facts about things and was going to be a scientist when I grew up. By the way; also not cool. I didn't win anyone over when I was 6 pointing out that daddy long legs weren't actually spiders but were members of the tick family. It did earn me another nickname though- not “daddy longlegs” or “scientist” -those might be cool- probably “dickweed” or “dillbag”.

Dillbag. What does that even =mean=?

I hated my body. I already wasn’t very good at socializing with other kids and my weird chest just made me feel that much different from my peers. I was also very tall from a young age so I slumped and hunched over in an effort to make myself shorter, I guess the idea was that I’d be less noticeable in the crowd, but the result was that I looked even weirder. A sideshow freak.

“Hey! You! Yes you, with the face! Step right up! Guaranteed to amaze and delight. For only a nickel you can see The Human Question Mark! You will squirm with discomfort as you watch a pathetic dilbag try -with absolutely NO hope of success- to become invisible!”

I was too self-centered for it to occur to me that most kids feel like weird freaks who don't belong.

I was so embarrassed to take my shirt off in front of others that I got a doctor’s note excusing me from PE all through junior high and high school. This just served to increase my sense of isolation.

When I was 13, our family moved up Emigration Canyon. Pinecrest actually. 9 miles of twisting winding road, past where the blacktop ran out, 8300 feet above sea level. Living out my dad's dream of having a cabin in the woods. My dad's dream. My Mom hated it. Me and my two brothers hated it. At least at first. I'd grown up in the suburbs and moving somewhere out in the woods in the mountains, with no TV reception was a major culture shock. There were no kids my age. Just a bunch of crunchy, burnout hippie artists who were desperately clinging to a bygone era of free love and psychedelic drugs and questioning authority.

I was very lucky I have this connection to nature, to life, to God, whatever you want to call it. But like any gift, it had to be developed. I couldn't pawn practice off on Gus the ghost anymore. Because I had lots of time and because we were so isolated, I learned how to be alone with only the sound of a bubbling creek and 20-plus semi-feral cats; the unchecked progeny of Kissy and Fritz, the two cats we had brought with us from the suburbs. The cats would stealthily do cat things in my periphery. I would sit among the pine trees and eventually, inevitably, my mind would grow quiet.

At school I finally found a group of people that would let me into their circle. The pot smokers. I started wearing a dirty, fleece-lined Levi jacket; the unofficial uniform of the despised “canyon kids”. I let my long, straight, platinum blond hair grow very long. They accepted me, but I was pretty sure it was because my parents had the best weed, not because I was finally cool.

Still, I always felt alone in the crowd. I just didn't trust people. They would always let you down. They would act like they loved you, wait until you were comfortable, then they would betray you; yank their love away from you only to give it to someone more deserving. I could draw on my strong connection to life but I had a bad attitude when it came to the rest of the human race.

When I was 17 a doctor told me that there was surgery I could have that would "fix" my ribcage. They told me it would hurt. A lot. I didn't care. I was unafraid but only because I didn't have sufficient imagination to understand what they meant by "hurt". The surgery took twelve hours -twice as long as expected- and they accidentally poked a hole in my lung, while they broke and reset 7 ribs and my sternum in two places. They left two metal bars that would hold the works together and would require more surgery to be removed a year later.

It was the beginning of summer and for the next 3 months I could only lie on my back in bed and was in constant agony, made worse -which didn't seem possible- any time I yawned, laughed, coughed, sneezed, moved. Breathed. All that and my chest still looked weird and now I had a huge scar. The pain meds didn't do shit.

Meanwhile, my friends were out doing summertime teenage things. I spent a lot of time regretting my decision. Lots of time to think. The mental monkey committee was telling me, “I’m doomed to be unattractive. No one could ever love me. I’m going to die alone.” They were loud and of course, they were wrong, but you know; monkeys.

Somehow, as the years went by I made a sort of uneasy peace with my body, but I was still painfully shy and hobbled by insecurity.

Fast forward. In my thirties, I’m living with my girlfriend, Theresa. She had been seeing an osteopath. She had mysterious pains- or something. I knew that osteopaths were considered quacks by a lot of doctors. She told me about a technique he used to uncover trauma and wanted me to see him. Seemed suspect, but ok, why not.

I think he called it "muscle testing" - you hold your arm straight out and the doctor asks yes or no questions while pushing down on your arm. The idea is to resist the pressure and keep your arm straight. If the answer is yes, your arm doesn't move and if the answer is no, your strength dwindles and your arm goes down. I don't remember the details exactly. I wasn't really paying attention because it seemed like bullshit.

He asked a bunch of standard questions. Was there physical abuse? Sexual abuse? No. No. No. This went on for a little while.

He explained that a significant number of people experience trauma in the womb. I'm thinking, boy, he's really reaching. The questions got weirder. Was there any pre-birth trauma? Yes.

Huh.

Was there a twin that didn’t make it? Yes.

What?!

Was it a boy? No. A girl. Yes.

It seemed so outrageous. It all happened very fast. Ridiculous. But at that moment something broke in me. I started sobbing uncontrollably. Tears. Tears and shaking and sobbing. I had no knowledge of a twin but my body knew the truth. I have never cried so hard before or since.

I called my mom that day and asked her about it. I think she would have said something to me at some point if there had been a twin- we were close like that. She said no. There wasn't a twin that she knew of.

Color me confused...

A few days went by and then one night, I had a vivid dream. My twin sister and I were standing at the edge of an abyss holding hands trying to get up the nerve to jump. We knew that when we jumped we would enter bodies with all their attendant shortcomings and begin a relationship with a world that wasn't always going to be nice. It would be a great adventure, we knew, but we were both terrified of making the leap.

"On 3 we'll jump. Okay?"

She nodded.

We both counted, "1, 2… 3"

But she didn't jump. She didn't jump! I felt our fingers slip apart. I'm falling, falling. This is not the time to have second thoughts but I don't want to do this anymore.

I startle awake and I understand. Now I know why my ribs grew the way they did. I =was= recoiling from life. I now know why I have one foot here and one foot there. I know why I don't trust people. I know why I expect betrayal. I get it.

I think the idea of jumping off a cliff was just a symbol my mind needed to use to make sense of an impersonal, undivided, Divine, metaphysical apparatus that brings our consciousness into the material world.

The question then: Is the twin thing true? I have no idea. Maybe, maybe not. There's no way to know. But if I have a mythology that has brought me, through grief, to a greater connection with spirit and which gives me peace and clarity, does it really matter? I don’t think so.

What I feel in my heart is that part of me is in her and parts of her are in everything else and =that= was her gift to me when she stayed behind.

I am never alone.



And she'll be waiting for me when I get home.