Train Jumping

I jumped off a moving train one night. I swear to the truth of that statement. I once jumped off a moving train. The train in question wasn’t moving very quickly. The ground onto which I jumped was grass. The floor of the boxcar wasn’t that high off the ground. I was not alone, so had anything gone wrong, there were other people there to help. Although, considering we were all jumping from the same train, the amount of help the others could have provided might not have been all that…helpful. I bring up the train jumping incident not as some cautionary tale of youthful stupidity, because, frankly, nothing happened as a result. There were no arrests, no injuries, and we all made it to class the next morning. The reason I’m starting this week’s post with the train incident is that I have been thinking about the person I am versus the person I was at different points in my life. At one point in my life, I was fearless. Maybe not fearless, but much less fearful than I am now. Fearless is better.

I used to love roller coasters. The sound of the chain ticking and the feel of gravity as it pulled against my spine as the car wound its way up the incline. The way my stomach would clench and I would hold my breath in anticipation of the drop during that brief stall at the top. The wind blowing hair in my eyes and the screams of people around me as we plummeted toward the bottom. I used to love all of that. When I could finally catch my breath at the bottom of the drop, I would laugh to ease the tension.

I used to swim in the ocean without checking for sharks. I swam in the Great Lakes not thinking of the pollution. The lure of the water and the waves was greater than any fear of bite or illness. I’ve hiked on the PG&E Trail in the foothills near Los Altos, California alone. The peace and quiet of hike up, the narrow path on the face of the hill between the two stretches of woods. I never worried that something terrible would happen to me. None of that scared me.

This scares me: for the first time in thirty years, I have no idea where I will be in six months. I have no safety net below me if I slip off the tightrope. I have friends, and family, that would gladly take me in. Truth is I can’t do that anymore. I can’t go stay at my sister’s while I lick my wounds. I can’t ask my friends to help me out more than they have already. I’ve already relied on them enough. They’ve been as supportive as I could ask, and then some. That’s only part of the reason I need face the future on my own. There’s a more important reason.

If I let you help me, I can stay scared. I can be afraid in the safety of your home. I can entertain the fear, the uncertainty, and the insecurity as long as I know there’s someone there to catch me. I will live in a place of fear and anxiety if I don’t just go and make my way. Robert Frost wrote, “The best way out is through.” I’m paraphrasing that for myself: the only way out is through.

The only way that I get to reclaim that fearless person I was is to walk through what frightens me. So, I don’t have a job, okay, I don’t have a job. So, I don’t have a home, okay, I don’t have a home. So, I’m taking a risk – a bullet-train speeding over a bridge between peaks of the Alps risk – and I’m still going to jump. Why? Why do I have to be so damn pig-headed stubborn about this?

On the other side of fear is strength. On the other side of fear is honesty. On the other side of fear is happiness. Maybe not right away, maybe not on the nights when I’m camping in a tent with a sleeping bag and pouch of soy nuts. Nevertheless, maybe that will be exactly when the moment when I realize, if I make it out of this, then I’ve made it through. Finding my strength may mean battling against the ease of weakness. Living an honest, authentic life requires actually living, not just marking off the days on a calendar in the kitchen. Yes, it is so much easier to live in the security of what I know than to put this all aside and start over on my own. However, the security of what I know isn’t much more than marking off those days on the calendar hung on the side of a refrigerator in a kitchen I don’t even like, a kitchen that isn’t working for me – the fourth kitchen I’ve said I didn’t like but wasn’t heard because I lost my voice. I want my voice back, even if it means I am the only one who will hear it.

The train is creeping along the tracks now. I can’t see the spot where I need to jump off yet, but I know it’s coming. The best I can do while I ride this train is to prepare myself for the jump, to practice facing the fear and the anxiety that flash before me. I can imagine the worst, and then ask myself if I could live through the worse. When I do that, I realize that I can live through the worst that I can imagine. The only thing I can’t live through is death, and frankly, once dead, what do I have to fear?

If I weigh what’s possible against what’s certain, I find that the possible includes positive things, too. What’s certain is more the same, if what’s certain is even still a possibility any longer, which I doubt. Without many options left, I can feel the train slowing, and I know I’m going to jump, so why waste my thoughts on fear?