Charlotte Shields-Rossi | a&e editor

Last August, after an uneventful summer of working in child care and spending upwards of eight hours a day on TikTok, I decided I needed something memorable to define my summer, so I landed (pun intended) on skydiving. I expected it to make me seem cooler and more interesting than I actually was (I think it worked). What I didn’t expect was how the entire experience made me confront the idea of death.

I have always been someone with a healthy fear of death, after all I spent hours the night before Googling sky diving deaths. But I had never really been in a situation where I have had to confront the very real possibility of dying, until I jumped 15,000 feet out of the plane.

The scariest part of the whole ordeal was the plane ride up. I had never really had a fear of flying, I assume most commercial airplanes are pretty safe, but this was different. It was small, old and didn’t have a door, only a transparent screen to board and jump out of. It was so shaky and loud I was certain that the plane was going to break apart at any moment, I actually couldn’t wait to jump out.

But the plane held on and once we reached 15,000 feet my partner and I jumped out. I don’t know what I expected, maybe the stomach dropping feeling you get from a rollercoaster, but it was nothing like that. After getting over the initial beauty and amazement of the experience, the only thing I could think of during the free fall was that I was falling.

I was looking straight at the ground, watching as it got closer and closer. For a couple of seconds my brain didn’t recognize that I was skydiving and was going to be okay. All I could feel was that I was hurling toward the ground and if the parachute didn’t work I would certainly die.

Of course I didn’t, the parachute deployed without a hitch, and I was never actually in any heightened danger, but it sure felt like it. After landing on the ground and letting the dopamine high wear off, I kept thinking to myself: “I know what it is like to fall to your death… kinda.”

Again, I am aware that I wasn’t going to die, but the falling sensation, what I was seeing — it couldn’t be much different than someone who actually fell out of the sky. Months later I still find it so weird to know that I know exactly what someone’s final moments might be like.

I thought that skydiving would make me braver, but looking back I think it had the opposite effect. Knowing what death looks like made me realize that I really want to stay away from it.

Charlotte Shields-Rossi can be reached at shieldsrossic@duq.edu