A Terrible Confession...

I have a confession to make... I can't hold it in any longer.... I feel like I have been deceiving you all and I just can't do it any more...

You see... the truth of the matter is that I just wasn't scared when I jumped off the bridge... It was nowhere near the scariest thing I have ever done in my life...

Phew! I feel much better getting that off my chest...

Don't get me wrong. Normally I have a healthy respect for heights, and the thought of throwing myself from a small platform in a suicide-like manner isn't a nice one for me...

There were two aspects to not being scared. The first was mental preparation... For a couple of nights before the bungee jump I rehearsed it mentally. I saw myself going through the whole process. Standing on the ledge, looking out into space, and then flinging myself forwards in a good looking swan dive... This helped a lot! The one thing I forgot to prepare was for the bit immediately before the dive, when I was having my legs strapped to the elastic... You may notice my body language is a bit tense there... a bit of my nervous tension showing through...

The second aspect of fear reduction was a little mental trick I read somewhere... I( can't remember what it was called i the book, but I'm just going to call it re-labelling... The trick is to take the sensation that is happening in your body and to just reframe it as something else. So, instead of fear I called it excitement, and magically it changed it from something debilitating, to something enlightening! I wasn't frightened... I was excited!

Like I said... That wasn't the scariest thing I have ever done.... I'd have to say that the scariest thing that I have ever done was to walk up to a woman in a bar and to try to talk to her...


I still remember the first time that I tried to do this... It was not that long ago! And it was terrifying...

I guess the reason that I find women more scary then jumping from bridges, or roller coasters, is that I know exactly what is going to happen in the latter instances. I have faith in elastic, and metal and wood. I know what it will do... I also think that women have no idea how scary they can be...

Women on the other hand are erratic, unpredictable, irrational, and generally terrifying. Plus rejection really hurts! I have some particular memories from my youth, which arise whenever I think about even trying it! It is something that I think I will have to overcome, perhaps making meeting women exciting instead of terrifying will work (though not too exciting maybe...)

Certainly this is something to work on for the future...