Hump Day!

I love Wednesday, you're half way finished with the week and your voicemail can be changed to Hi!, It's Hump Day! Leave a message at the tone. Then you can plead innocent and slutty at the same time. An Equal Opportunity moment.

When I was a little girl, my friends and I used to take a bus to something called The Plunge. I loved it - it was the typical indoor community pool, without the safeguards of present times. Kids could come and go, parents never seemed to be there, and there was a high dive.

My best friend H would climb up the ladder and just jump off. Being all of five or six, I decided I would jump off the high dive too. I've never been a swimmer, over my lifetime I've mastered the dog paddle and not much else, but I took my tiny little self over to the base of the ladder. The callous teen life guard said, "If you go up, you can only jump down".

So I climbed the ladder, I didn't look down. I walked the plank. I gave it a little bounce. I paused and saw my toes at the edge of the rough board. I saw the water wrinkled below me. I heard my girlfriend telling me to jump. And I froze. I couldn't move. H pushed the other kids aside and started to climb up. The guard started the whistle and H told me to go back down with her. And I did. I didn't try to fight the fear. I let it control the situation.

So I have been thinking about people I've known and what draws me to them. And then I wonder if it's more my reaction to them that makes relationships exciting. I've protected myself so well, I'm quite insulated.

What would it be like to feel joy, hate, anger, passion, deeply? What would it be like to feel those emotions on a daily basis?

I live a mostly white bread existence, tame and routine. What would it be like to step outside of myself for more than a moment? To finally jump off the high dive without looking back?