A Decision to Jump on Life
To jump whatever it takes, that’s what I have to do. That’s what I want to do. It’s a feeling that comes from deep inside and goes out of my chest. It needs to get out and expand, grow and evolve, just as that spiral I have tatooed to remind me every single day.
I remember that one time I was canyoning in Valle del Jerte and I felt scared to jump out of a waterfall. I remember that one time I was in Canaima, one of the prettiest and purest places I’ve ever been to and I was scared to jump into the water. Scared to jump.
I’m impulsive as a Gemini that I am. I get on planes that take me anywhere, the further the better, but I’m incapable of jumping. I’m afraid of getting to the edge, I feel like I’m going to slide and fall. It’s like one of those dreams in which you wake up all of a sudden because you are falling into the void.
Yes, I’m afraid to jump, to truly bite life as a whole and not by small pieces.
I don’t know if the clumsy in me has anything to do with my astrological sign or with the blood that runs through my veins (thanks aunt Conchy) but the thing is that I’m really good at it and the other day I couldn’t resist anymore and I twisted my ankle.
At the TBM (Travel Bloggers Meeting) in Andorra, one of the most important travel blogger meetings in Spain, I twisted my ankle while jumping on an acrobatics trampoline. You must be wondering how? Well, it happened and I have a theory for it.
For a while I doubted, going around and jumping discreetly to get the lay of the land. Should I jump or not? I get close to the edge and feel the adrenalin. I go back to the starting point again and again. If I jump into that pool, would I jump enough? Yes, there I go. Oh, no, no. Yes, I’m doing this! If the rest of the group has done it, why can’t I?
Hmm but we know how you are Alba… you end up messing things up. Well, not this time! I decide to jump but in the last moment I regret, I misstep and… I twist it!
I fell in the pool in pain. I know this pain, I’ve felt it twice before. I break it and I break myself at the same time.
I must recognise I’m not a superhero with bird wings that can fly anywhere she wants. Most of the time my wings crack lightly. I think they are more of a butterfly kind. Now, I spread my wings and see where the wind takes me. I fly with it all, with my hopes, my dreams but also with my fears, those that I have like everybody else.
The result? A red backpack that I take with me where the wind carries me; may it be the one coming from the South, North, East or West. Every time I pack lighter and lighter for I think what you carry in a backpack is the reflection of what you accumulate in your life and mind and at the end of the day, you don’t need it.
From every trip I bring my backpack pregnant with stories and when it gets totally empty—sometimes it takes months or years and it gets confused and mixed up with new trips—I start looking for new experiences so that I can fill it again.
And you know what? At the end of the day I realised that if butterflies can fly from one side of the world to the other that means their wings are not that fragile, aren’t they?
As Marina puts it, the writer of Hey, hey world (in Spanish), such a lovely blog that puts a smile on my face every time I read it, ‘In the end I understood that the only way to avoid the fear was to embrace it’. Talking to her I came to the conclusion that, mad as a hornet that we are by being Gemini, we have to grab the fear by the horns and when it gets distracted and docile, we give it a biiig hug!
As I said, from now on I am going to jump determined, with enthusiasm and confidence.
