The big jump

​​​​​​​There you are, everything is set up, with a bunch of other people you are in a tiny noisy plane flying higher and higher. When looking out of the window you can see a stunning landscape but are not even able to enjoy it - all that is running through your head is fear, excitement and curiosity. How will it be?
Already the night before you are struggling to sleep, you have been thinking about this for so long and now it is so near. With hardly even three hours of sleep you are only a few more minutes away from an incredible exciting moment in your life and so the adrenaline keeps you more than awake anyways.
Your heart is racing, your stomach feels strange and it gets worse the higher the plane flies. Eventually, you are there, the plane reached 15,000ft and the door opens, everything goes incredibly quickly now, you see other people screaming, jumping off that plane, they seem to simply disappear. When it finally is your turn your body is between resisting and being super keen to do it. Luckily your instructor forces you to jump anyways. You have a last look at the GoPro and the rim of the plane until you are not held by anything anymore, the wind just splashes in your face and after anxiously holding on your harness you find out that there is nothing to do about the situation and so just spread your arms and enjoy. Pretending being a bird, which obviously cannot fly. In these 80 seconds of free falls it does not matter anymore what happens. You start accepting the situation and your body releases a huge amount of hormones making your perception different and the moments incredibly joyable, similar to a synthetic drug, but natural.
Suddenly, the parachute opens and everything is over. You are still in the air and of course still falling but now you have something to hold on. Something that can bring you back to earth safely without in a situation where you feel like dying. Finally you can enjoy the gorgeous view and together with your instructor you are steering the parachute and slowly cruising back to earth. Back on the ground you feel like hugging the whole world, you feel incredibly alive and start processing what has just happened. The next hours you will still not quite realize what you have went through and since all the hormones are still in your bloodstream you feel like being in trance.
Skydiving is a wonderful sport more people should do and although it takes some balls to actually go for it, it is so incredibly rewarding.