One second

I loved skydiving. And then, in a moment as quick and rare as a shooting star, I hated it.

What happened in between was this: Two friends, both trained skydiving instructors, went up into the air. On the way down, they collided. One man died. The other shattered his pelvis and broke his spine in five places.

My boyfriend was the one who lived.

What baffled me most about the incident was how quickly it happened — how the entire world changed for two men, their families and many of their friends in less than a second. It made no sense. In a world where we know so much about the molecules and cells that create a person’s life, how is it that life could be irrecoverably altered just like that?

A second is nothing. A blip. A snap. Less than a breath. It barely makes a difference, except when it does — when one man becomes a husk and the other dissolves into the space between something and nothing.

By nature, an accident is selfish and senseless. It’s just this stupid flash of a moment that comes in, fucks everything up and then leaves. There’s no bracing for it, no preparation, no warning.  There’s no opportunity to protest, to save, to protect. You can’t possibly put up a fight against something that’s already gone.

Afterward, the minutes and days and weeks that stretched ahead seemed overwhelming and impossible. That’s the cruelest thing about accident time — the chaos comes in a flash, but it takes an agonizingly long time to crawl through the wreckage.

Even now, I don’t understand how we slogged through the months that followed. I was barely a person. I was the cicada’s shell that had been left behind on a tree. And I was only on the sidelines; I wasn’t the one filed away in an intensive care unit.

I cried until it was my natural state. I drove to work and locked myself in the bathroom and consciously reminded myself to keep breathing. I went to the friend’s funeral, which was probably not a wise thing to do, and then I went on a bizarre shopping spree where I bought every Lance Armstrong book I could find. I still don’t know why. I slept on the floor of my boyfriend’s hospital room and refused to leave when visiting hours were over. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t will myself to be the one who was hurt or dead.

One day, at my boyfriend’s urging, I got back in the air. I jumped about 40 more times after that, and then I couldn’t do it anymore. There are many people in skydiving who can witness an injury or fatality and shake it off. They understand that it’s part of the sport, and they are willing to take the risk. I admire them for it, but I was no longer that person. And I was OK with that.

Sometimes people ask me if I skydive anymore. And I usually laugh and say, “No, no. I grew up.” The truth, however, is more complicated than that. I grew older, yes. And I grew more cautious. And I grew cold for something that once brought me great joy.

But while I locked my passion for skydiving away into a little compartment, I also unleashed a respect for other parts of my life.

Over the entirety of the incident, I gathered a certain sense of peace, which was both unexpected but welcome. It came from knowing that one second is the division between happiness and pain, bitterness and gratitude, here and not. It became the glass lens to help me to see clearly, reassess and do what is most important.

Accepting and understanding that fragile shard of time is what drives me now to play with the dog, finish the book, climb the mountain, travel the world, love the boyfriend-turned-husband and ultimately make more moments that matter.

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This post was part of The Scintilla Project, two weeks of storytelling. See what it’s all about.