We go swimming.
The outdoor pool has just opened for the summer.
.
There are three diving boards.
1m.
3m.
5m.
.
Everyone is excited to have a go.
They don’t look very high from the pool.
But weirdly
they feel a lot further once you’re up there.
.
I hate heights.
And ever since a near panic attack 20 years ago have largely managed to avoid them.
.
It’s the fear of falling.
Or not so much falling
as the feeling I’ll throw myself off.
.
Since your diagnosis
you managed to help me get better.
Feel braver.
.
We did a treetop trail at Centre Parcs.
You and the kids racing on ahead 20m from the ground.
Me holding up the queue of surly teenagers behind us.
.
You got me on Disneyland rollercoasters.
Up the Shard.
And miraculously
to the second level of the Eiffel Tower.
.
And yet
I can’t face the 3m dive.
.
The shame of a belly flop.
The pain of a back flop.
.
Let yourself fall
some one tells me
not long after you die.
.
I already am
I think.
.
I found you at the summit.
But where’s the meaning in coming down the mountain?
.
Anyway
the problem isn’t falling.
It’s what happens when I land.
.
Or no
that’s not it.
I already know the feeling of hitting the ground.
Rock bottom.
So maybe the problem is the falling.
More falling.
.
I climb the steps to the 3m dive.
I walk to the end of the board.
.
I remember the scene in Toy Story when Woody is telling the rest of the assembled toys that Buzz can’t fly.
To prove him wrong, Buzz leaps into the air and via a fortuitous combination of events, manages to travel airborne around the room.
The rest of the toys applaud, astounded.
That’s not flying.
Woody tells them.
It’s just falling with style.
.
I look down.
.
I turn around.
Walk back along the board.
And back down the steps
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On Coping is my story of surviving on the sidelines of cancer.
It begins in March 2022 with On Coping #1, written the day after my 41st birthday. The day my wife Imogen, the mother of my three children, was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.
On Coping is the story of what happened next.
Just catching up with 'on coping' - promise I haven't fallen off the reading highboard xxx