No Fall

    My parents told me I learned to stand and walk when I was really young, they said that’s how I got such a good sense of balance. It was a real hassle then, though, since I’d get into all sorts of trouble in the process. When I was four my mother signed me up for ballet classes. She thought I could be the next star. I loved doing all the exercises we did and I kept begging the instructor to teach me to dance en pointe, but I was too young for her to teach me it safely. Maybe I’m not artistic, but I think I stopped going to ballet lessons when they started teaching us choreography more than technique and form. That would’ve been in fifth grade. For the next couple years I just bummed around and read a lot.

    I think I had just turned twelve when I discovered tightrope walking. Instantly I was hooked. Mom, against her better judgement, went and rented Wire Walker for me. I sapped up everything about the movie, enthralled. Immediately I tied a piece of rope between the two trees in our backyard and began practicing. They told me I was incredible, my friends, my father. But that was after I had practiced for hours. Every day I’d come inside with new bruises and scrapes that my mother treated. She’d scold me for not doing something safer and more ladylike, and when she really got fed up she’d cut the rope in half and I’d have to go buy a new one.

    I refused to quit. In eighth grade I bought myself a cable for wire walking" they stayed more taut than ropes and came in smaller sizes. That year was rainier than any other, and since I was going into high school the next year my parents pressured me to improve my grades. Never before had I hated school as much as I did then. Before I was going there and got to practice walking in return, but now I was doing twice as much homework while walking half as much. I started locking myself in my room crying, wishing I could go outside.

    When summer came at last my wire was rusted. I tested balancing on it and knew it would crumble at any minute. My parents tried using it as an opportunity to get me to do something else. Mom would whisk me away to church and Dad refused to buy me a new cable. They’d tell me I had to dress a certain way, act a certain way. Eventually I just started reading again. It wasn’t that I hated life, but nothing really thrilled me in the same way.

    Honestly I barely remember a thing from my first two years of high school. I’d walk along curbs on my way to school with my face planted in some Jane Austen novel. I probably blended in with everybody to the point that I was unrecognizable. I stopped having friends. I began to just lay around all day mindlessly. Life plateaued. There wasn’t much reason to live anymore. If I had a rope or wire to hang myself with, I’d have used it to walk on. That’s why I stayed alive.
    
    When I turned 16 and got my driver’s license, everything changed. I had freedom where I could go, what I could do. I searched around on the internet and found a place I could start tightrope walking again. Practicing after such a long break was gratifying in a way I couldn’t express in words or pictures or anything. My joy in life, what gave me a reason to be on the Earth, it was returned to me at long last. It came so easily to me, the rope held so stably, it was as if I had never left it.

    After a couple hours my mother called me and asked me where I was. With friends, I told her. I’d be back for dinner. I hung up and tears rushed to my face. I gripped the rope in my hands. I’m sorry, friend. I’m sorry I left you for so long. We’re together now, though. I hope that is enough.

Author's Note

I keep telling myself I want to write more in third person, but it's fun writing in first person. Oh, and there's no movie called Wire Walker. The title is an amalgam of all the movies about Philippe Petit, who was the guy to walk on a wire between the World Trade Center.