Honorable Mention: "The Freedom of Flight" by Katherine Holding

While at camp, I found myself at a small warehouse in New Hampshire. The thing about this warehouse was that it had a 150 mph fan. The idea behind this fan was the ability to skydive… indoors. Well, everyone else skydived… I attempted to, but often found myself on the ground being pushed by the wind to get up. Which, when achieved, led to me back on the safety net. It turns out that while the fan is strong, you need to have some aerodynamic abilities… apparently I don’t. Yet.

As my turn to go neared, I found myself apprehensive. I wasn’t scared because I didn’t want to go, but you had to fall backwards, into this empty space, and I thought that I couldn’t do it. As all of my friends went, I kept thinking, “the guy’s gonna say go, and I’m just going to be standing there like an idiot.”

Well, he said go, and much to my surprise, I leaned into the wind and let it engulf me. The next two minutes were exuberating… until I realized that about fifty eyes were on me. I was failing drastically and I knew that my skin had that windswept effect. But at that moment, I realized that I just didn’t care. I was flying and that's all that mattered.

The next couple of days, I was consciously aware of what I was feeling, and over the next few days, I tried new things and spent the time being completely goofy with my friends… basically, I was a kid at camp and honestly, I couldn’t have been happier. It felt as if this weight I had been carrying around with me had just gone. Vanished.

When I was in the third grade I was diagnosed with a moderate to severe anxiety disorder which means that I fall relatively high up on the ladder of people affected by anxiety disorders. This disorder never leaves me alone. Sure, there are days when I feel great, and can pretty much ignore it. But, no matter what, it's there. It will always be there. There is nothing I can do to stop that. Yes, I am learning cope, and yes, over the years, with lots of practice and therapy, it has gotten better. But I always knew I was different. I knew that I was struggling with something that to many people would seem simple and self-explanatory. My other friends were at the mall, playing outside, and never really considering a life like mine possible. I could sense that there was something about me, something that pretty much no one else who I was surrounded by faced. And this is when I began to feel lonely.

My biggest fear from third grade though sixth was that I was different… that there was something about me that wasn’t quite right. For a long time, I lived my life, doubting that I would ever be able to call myself a “normal” person.

That is the weight that I have carried around with me throughout my life. For years, I have struggled with anxiety, and now I have this struggle of accepting myself. Through years of fearing that somehow I was letting someone else down, disappointing myself, or making some huge huge mistake, I learned that if I lowered expectations, the impact of a mistake would be much more minimal. So, I lived my life, telling myself that whatever I was going to do, wouldn’t be good enough. At the time, this worked, I would always end up surviving the day from whatever travesty I feared.

But I never thought that I would face the long-term repercussions of it. After years, of telling myself, what ever I was doing wasn’t good enough, I have instituted a feeling of worthlessness inside me. I am always apologizing because I feel that I am not good enough for whatever I am about to ask of another, and I constantly found myself wondering… are my friends really my friends? Not because I think that they aren’t wonderful, but because I just can’t imagine a world where people would like me for me.

That is, I couldn’t. While my life has had many bumps in the road, I now find myself at a relatively flat meadow. I’m happy again. I see immense joy in life, that even two years ago, seemed like a distant memory. I still apologize, and have many, many, many moments of self deprecation or doubt, but, I’m flying. I mean, I’m truly flying.

Similar to my experience in New Hampshire, I’m still getting used to it, and find myself many times back on the support net, lying down, trying to get back up. But now, one thing is different, that wind that the fan made, it's pushing me up, not down. When I fall, I have others to force me to get back up and to remind me that… I’m not alone. So even in my darkest, when my disorder can’t be contained and is let out, I’m surrounded by people who are there to push me back up.

See, the thing with the wind is that it was so strong that even if you tried your hardest to stay down, it wouldn’t let you, physically, it was impossible. The force of the wind was greater than that of gravity. Science wouldn’t allow it. Well, now when I fall down, the people in my life are there to push me back up, because gravity is only so strong, and the weight that dragged me down everyday… the weight that said I wasn’t normal… isn’t there. It's been replaced with the knowledge that normal is just a false perception. I’m never going to be the person that conforms to societies wishes, but for me, that's normal. It's normal that I will spend every day of my life fighting for what I think is right, and constantly pushing myself and others to see the light in a tunnel of darkness. I have experienced that darkness, that isolation… and now I can safely say that my normal is different from yours. We each are different, and so we each have a different normal. I spent years trying to be society's “normal”. But now I know that there is only one person who can dictate my normal… me. I have found my normal. I am the normal Katherine Holding. My normal is living life inquisitive, passionate, and caring - always looking for another way. Always believing that there is good even when one can only see bad. Now nothing is there to stop me from flying, and nothing ever will again.

If you have not already begun to fly, my hope is that one day, you too, will experience that sensation of falling into the wind.