A Year Out from the Fallout: Living Life Like I am Jumping Off a Rope Swing

You know you can't keep the ground from shaking, no matter how hard you try, You can't keep the sunsets from fading, you gotta treat your life like You're jumping off a rope swing maybe 'cause the whole thing is really just a shot in the dark - Old Dominion






A year ago yesterday Mrs. Curtis died, and it was like the rug was pulled out from under me in life. I felt alone. I missed her. Things felt scary and weird.


There were a few months that I was not exactly thriving. I lost some weight. If you saw me and my hair looked dirty, it probably was. I would just start crying in random places - on the shuttle to campus, in my car, over dinner, on the walk home from school. It was like a Dr. Seuss book - will you cry with a mouse? Will you cry in your house? With a fox? In a box? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.


I would tell myself to get it together. I was not only on the struggle bus. I was driving the struggle bus.


Life was going to change. I knew it. I was comfortable with my life the way it was. But it was like when someone pushes you in a pool to try to teach you how to swim - I could start swimming or start sinking.


Somewhere around November I started trying to gain more control of my life. Life was already going to change, so why not try to be the agent of this change?


I started jumping. I jumped so much I felt like my life was a game of jumprope. When faced with a decision, I would tell myself, “Jump.”


I started making bold moves. Life can take you to some interesting places that you do not expect. And I started acting like my life was a jump rope like the Old Dominion lyrics. The rope would swing, and if I stayed on it long enough, it would swing back, but I had to pick the best time to jump. Sooner or later I had to jump.


Before I left for Christmas break, I packed up everything. I did not know if my major first move would work out and would not know until I was already 600+ miles away for Christmas, but I knew I had to take a leap of faith. Either it was going to work out or not. But regardless if that worked out or not, things had to change. I could not let things stay the same. I had to do better. I had to crawl out of the wreckage of my former life and find that next stop on the journey. I have never packed not knowing where I was going, but all I knew was that either it was what I applied for or I would find something else. Things had to get better. They just had to. I just had to jump.


It was not easy. The beginning of 2017 found me in a closet crying about all the changes required to take this big jump into the scary unknown. My mother found me and said, “Tabitha, what is what the matter with you? I am not used to seeing you like this.” She was right. I can usually hold it together better than I was in that closet thinking about all that I had to let go to get me to the next step. I felt unsteady, and I do not like that feeling. I like to know the next step, the next 5-10 steps, even, and I was jumping into a great abyss January 2nd.


Jumping did not come without sacrifices. I had to let go of some major things that I cared about. I had to empty my hands to be open for what was next. I could not have grabbed on to my future with clenched fists.


Everything changed. Jump. Jump. Jump. 2017 has been the biggest year of change than I can remember. Change is not necessary a bad thing. When it felt bad, I would remind myself that I was going through some major life readjustment events, and that it was okay to feel that way for a bit.


It was uncomfortable every time I jumped, but I also felt like I was stepping into the Promised Land. I would ask myself, “How can this be my life?” I felt like I was in a dream land because things were so good.


I write this all to say that at the end of a full year of jumping, I can say that it was worth it. It was not easy, but there is a certain peace to knowing that you are right where you are supposed to be. I could not have done it without letting go of a lot of things. Some of those things required deep sacrifice because they were things I loved. Some of those things were people and things that were dragging me down. One thing I did was to stop treating every relationship in my life like a fixer upper project. I needed to give myself distance from those people that only drained me because I needed to focus on me. And it was freeing.


I started examining everything in my life and purging - tangible and intangible things. I made may so many trips to drop off boxes of things I had purged this year. As I would unpack from my move in January, I really thought about every item I unpacked to think about if I really needed it. It was liberating to let go. Jump.


I used the excuse this year that everything else was changing so why not one more change? Jump.


And on the other side of all the jumping, I can confidently say that I am living my best life. And I never would have gotten here without letting go of everything.


So maybe you do not have to jump and change just about everything in your life for a year. But maybe there is one big jump you need to make.


JUMP.