When I was in college in Florida and I didn’t go to class, I went to the sinkholes, not-so-secret secret spots in the woods, south of the university. We parked on a sandy two-track. We hiked to the edge of the sink. I took off all my clothes. I grabbed the rope with the shepherd’s crook that leaned against the live oak. I shimmied up the rope and held on tight with my hands and feet. My boyfriend gave me a hard, hard push. I flew out over the pit. I used my body to gain momentum. I flew into the woods, then arched over the water. So naked.
Over the pit, I looked down. What I saw, far below, was both a mirror — I could see the sky on the water, and the trees’ reflections—and a window: I could see down into the silent heart of Earth.
I flew alone through the sky over Big Dismal. Into the woods. Back over the water.
When did the treacherous inversions begin, falling as healing, submersion as safety? What had happened to this girl’s body on land that made her fling herself into deep open dark water? I didn’t wonder. Little Dismal, other sinks. From bridges into rivers, towers into lakes.
Now I understand when you are in water, you are held. Buoyed. The skin is tended to and touched, such a soothing caress. The envelopment always felt to me like kindness.
But I wasn’t wondering or noticing, I was flying.
At Big Dismal, my bare feet hooked tight around the fat knot — grip, grip before leap. Spinning, I sailed over the lip of limestone, into the forest and I hurtled my body hard, to swing back over the pit high and fast. Always, I let go over the dead center of the black pool.
I dropped through cool air. I kicked my legs up over my head and, fingertips first, made my arms into a point. Head first, I sped towards the water. The tighter I made my body, the straighter and smoother I’d enter, the less it would hurt, the better it would feel. I plunged down into the pitch dark water, Big Dismal, knowing if I were a syllable, it would be, simply, this.
When I entered dim water, the color of ice tea, I was narrow, impervious, deeply locked into myself. I must not touch things in the dark in the sinkhole. Cars, trees, a dead mattress, branches, and snakes swayed unseen in shadow and darkness under the surface of the water. The bodies of dead divers were trapped in the depths, in the lattice caves below. At the sides of the pit, or anywhere, really, cottonmouth — water moccasins — slithering black cursive in the brown water. I did a summersault and reversed, and swam, easily, back up to the light, unafraid.
I swam to the side. I climbed up the tree roots, mud smearing my naked body. I nodded at my boyfriend. He hooked the rope and I grabbed the rope and I swung. And again. And again. And again.
Here’s everything I know about ecstatic gestures. Fear is fuel. Not-knowing is pure hope. A girl can want to lose her body. It’s not a death wish, it’s a life urgency.
In Introduction to Psychology that year, I wrote down the word re-enactment and circled it. Question mark. When the professor lectured on the controversy of recovered memory, I wrote down notes I’ve saved, to this day, thinking then The lengths some people will go to in order to get people to feel sorry for them! I believed people exaggerated stories about terrible childhoods. Neglect? Abuse? Oh get a job!
I thought those things. I really did.
A decade later, on an airplane, in the window seat, I read an article in a woman’s magazine. Women explained what they’d forgotten and how and when things came back. I looked down at the cloud cover, and in that moment — some of the stories were so similar — I realized many things. I hadn’t forgotten. I just hadn’t thought of those things, not this way. I was using a different frame.
***
I don’t jump to touch danger, not any more. I don’t mistake falling for flying anymore. I mostly stay away from high places and dark waters. I walk. I do my work. But lots of times, here on land, I feel like I’m holding my breath.