A Beginner's Guide to Free Fall

by Andy Abramowitz

Knock hard, life is deaf.

Moderately fulfilling probably put her in better stead professionally than most people. But that didn’t alter the fact that moderately fulfilling was, definitionally, shy of fulfilling.

This man was a fascination. An exotic species to which she could not relate at all. She had no idea what it was like to be like him, to be a carrier of that gene that made fast friends of everyone, to mosey through the world with a picked-first-in-gym-class mentality.

Rachel had crouched behind that very tree while playing hide-and-seek. How appropriate that we began childhood thirsting for this game. It prepared us for a life lived in search of things we knew were out there but couldn’t quite see, hiding from things we knew would eventually find us.

Maybe there was no pride to swallow, after all. Maybe the greatest harm in stepping up and accepting responsibility for one’s mistakes was admitting to the world that you were capable of them.

Norman looked at her in that fatherly way, supportive yet chiding. “Well, sweetheart, somebody who knows better than you seems to think it is your thing.”

We’re all terribly unsure of ourselves, each one of us tunneling toward something strange. But you—you are nobody’s shadow. And even if you were, a shadow does not belong to the thing that casts it. Can you do what I did? Of course you can. Probably better.

So much of life was holding on to the people and the things that rooted you in the world, so that you didn’t have to wake up each day and start anew.