When The Penny Drops

Falling is quite an exhilarating feeling. Jumping and diving into water, skydiving, or bouncing on a trampoline. It gives a nuance to being like a bird, having no connection to the ground. Only for a moment, I’m flying.

It’s the loss of control that is terrifying initially but within a snap second I’m enjoying the ride. Landing safely on the ground or becoming one with the water is the next part. The part that’s fulfilled a guarantee that I’m where I wanted to end up.

In June of 2010 a few days after my birthday I fell and lost control on my qualifying jump on a Helicopter Rappel course. As a friend said to me the day after I got out of the hospital - Life really comes crashing down when you turn 22.

I felt the humour in that statement at the time, and still do. After all, it was a true and sad irony. I was 6’3 and felt bulletproof until the moment I hit the ground. I even lost a few millimetres in my height, literally. I thought I’d figured life out - Think and do good things and good things will happen to you. The law of attraction, positive thinking, etc.

It was a million dollar wound. The doctors, nurses, medics and physicians had told me I should have at least broken something or been left with some kind of permanent injury. If I’d landed on my feet, I would have been dead from the energy transfer up my spine or at least been left paralysed permanently somehow. A few months later I had an 84mm high explosive round burst in the air 3 meters above my head which also should have killed me. 2010 was a year of great concern for my poor mother. I certainly saw moments like these as divine intervention or at the very least, plain old luck. Whatever the reason, the universe decided to spare me from death and I was thankful for it.

The day after the accident I walked in to the Regimental Aid Post to get issued my sick leave and have a debrief on the accident. Battalion fitness training was running somewhere around the camp, so the malingerers were taking up most of the seats in the waiting room. As I walked in, the room fell silent. I saw someone I knew and sat down next to him. He told me that everyone that was talking there had abruptly finished speculating and trying to get the story of my accident right. Apparently one guy had said - ‘Na bro, I heard he was pushed out’ another said ‘Na I heard he had a fight with someone in the chopper and then they pushed him out’ and my personal favourite - ‘Na na na he landed the jump and someone knocked him out at the bottom because he was talking shit’

I was in a coma. I was dead. I was knocked out. I’d broken both of my legs. I was fine and I walked away a minute later. When in fact - I had walked out of the hospital that night with only 5 bruised discs, and a bruise on my left tricep. I received the nicknames ‘Brakehand’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’ though thankfully they never stuck, as an infantry battalion has no shortage of guys fucking up just as bad or worse to help your moronic story fade into the background.

Every time a UH-1 Iroquois would fly over the camp, my hands would pool in sweat. I’d look up and try to imagine getting on the helicopter again and conquering my fears, but I couldn’t visualise anything but falling. The image of falling was more terrifying than hitting the ground again. Reliving the frantic and desperate moment of trying to regain control, knowing that I could not affect it.

I can still feel confusion watching the rope slip from my grasp. I can still smell the rope burning as it ran at a manic speed through the descender. I can still see the faces of the four other guys in my team, confused and stunned, watching me fall uncontrollably to certain death. I can still hear the buzzing in my ears after my head snapped back and hit the steel frame of my pack when I impacted with the ground. I can still hear the thud-thud-thud-thud of the helicopter as the pitch of the blades adjusted to land. I can still feel my crushed and winded diaphragm twitching and spasming as I gasped desperately for air. I can still feel the wrenching, immobilising pain in the lower thoracic area of my spine as I tried to unhook my rope and get free of my gear as the helicopter pulled me along the grass. I can still hear the scream of the medic as she ran across the airfield to help me. I can still feel the gut wrenching depression that I’ve broken my back and I’ll never walk again. The scene is imprinted and embossed into my brain. Pain and fear at the deepest emotional level.

The worst part of the whole ordeal was when the helicopter landed and shut down, the distant murmors of my Platoon died, and the silence fell. Lying on my back staring up at the perfect blue sky and the long grass gently blowing around me. A broken man, on a perfect day.

The rest of the guys were over a hundred meters away, and the medic had run off to grab her trauma kit. The course manager came over and looked down on me with his eternal sideways grin and said ‘Fuckin’ hell boy, you alright?’ to which I replied ‘Ahh, no, not really. I’m sorry. I fucked up’ with a sheepish forced laugh. He smiled, and walked away. The next instructor came over and picked up my rappelling harness which had been cut off my body. He looked down and said with his satirical sense of humour ‘Mean, this is mine now. You all good?’ To which I gave the same reply. The third instructor was an SAS section commander. Like most SAS soldiers, he didn’t have to be big in stature to have a big presence. He was there to instruct on the course because the SAS sponsored it, and because they are experts in rappel. Experts in everything as far as we were concerned. He was about 5’10, Maori, with long black wavy hair that was combed back over his head and ran down below his ears. Pure power and strength, yet emanating humour and humility.

He said nothing. He only looked down on me with a look of pure disappointment and disgust. The way you might look at a dirty heroin needle left in a kids playground, or the way you would look at a dog shit on a nice rug. That moment felt like an eternity. He then shook his head and walked away. It hurt, disappointing someone like that. I was on the ground, alone and hidden in the grass. The very place shit belongs.

It wasn’t until about 4 years later that I completed the course. I found the self belief and confidence because of man who could see the potential in me and who had truly embraced his purpose and being as a warrant officer, and used it to inspire me to try again. Something I’ll certainly write about later.

In the years that passed after successfully completing the jumps I had regained my confidence and purpose. I had conquered my personal failure and in my own eyes I had redeemed myself. The memory of the accident was now a story of bravado, a lesson in survival and one that I certainly tell with the humour and humility it deserves.

Two years ago today, I was in very toxic relationship where I had truly hit the bottom and contemplated suicide. I made the decision to get out of the hole I found myself in. When I started taking steps to happiness I finally felt like I had developed such incredible momentum that I could achieve anything. I’d built my own home, developed a career as a professional teacher, rekindled relationships with my friends and family. I’d created a life that I was in control of. Yet somehow I was paralysed with anxiety.

Saturday mornings were the worst. From when I woke up I felt I had less than 36 hours to accomplish as much as I could. I have trees on my property to clear and cut up for firewood. Fence posts to dig in and sheep netting to lay up and tension. Walls to paint, shelves to make, friends to see, things to sell. I started to develop a psychosis that I couldn’t start anything, because I was terrified of choosing the wrong course of action and waste any more precious time. I couldn’t even put my boots on, some days.

I felt like I had purchased something that cannot be bought - time. I needed to use every single millisecond of time in order to make it worth something, make it count. This led to severe procrastination. It took me 20 minutes just to pick a shirt to put on. It took hours to decide which tasks to do, in order and priority based on effort and means available. I’d end up spending more time looking at my phone, searching for a dopamine hit that would make me feel better. My momentum had been stunted.

I had a long conversation with a good friend who is still serving in my former unit. He told me about his personal struggles and revealed his anxiety and depression in detail. At first I thought - oh god, what can I do to help him? But the more he explain it, I started to recognise those traits and emotions in myself and when I finally clicked, I realised that I myself had developed the same conditions. I wanted to help and heal others, but what good is that intention if I can’t help myself?

I signed up for a breathwork course because I felt like I was at the point of desperation with the anxiety. I’d learnt about and touched on several other techniques for dealing with anxiety, but I felt like I needed to explore my subconscious programming to understand why, because consciously I couldn’t find a logical answer or pinpoint an event that was the source of my pain. I was the fittest I’d been in years. I was advancing my knowledge and skills every day. I was helping people. I was spending time with good mates. I was single, good looking and free… yet I couldn’t grasp my situation - I’d hit the ceiling for my capabilities. I was still lonely. I was still telling myself good things would come, even when they weren’t. I was still afraid to speak my mind and would feel shameful when I gave in to animalistic desires.

With each breath I took during the transformational journey, I felt like my body was electrifying, like I was starting to lift off the floor and near the point of understanding yet somehow I was still tethered to reality. What happens if there’s an earthquake in here? What’s the air conditioner set to? Hmm, these architraves and skirtings around the room are very neat and colonial, I wonder how old they are? It took me well into my 20’s before I understood what it meant to be a sentient and I’d spent a long time tapping into and re-enforcing the animal brain, the survival mindset. Don’t let go. Stay on point. Keep your shit together. Someone’s out to get you.

I didn’t know how to let go, to relinquish my white-knuckled grip on reality. In a move to do so, I moved my hands to my chest and unclipped the metaphorical rope that held the whole weight of my life, and held it in my hands. I was suspended below a light, below the life force of universe. I embraced the last feeling of total control and let go.

I fell. The electrifying feeling of falling washed over my body. When I opened my eyes, a light was swirling in a circular pattern above my body like rotor blades. Kind of like a helicopter. With each breath, I recognised those rotor blades. I’d seen them before. I’d laid here before.

As I looked beside me, I saw the silhouette of a man standing over me. A man with long black hair and a hooded DPM jacket. He was looking down at me with the same look of disgust I had seen before. It all felt like a coincidence still. I asked myself ‘Why am I seeing this again? Is this just mind playing random memories to me, proving it’s influence and power? It’s been almost 9 years since the accident.

The more I looked at him, the more he looked at me. Then, crying bubbled up out of me the way it did when I was a small child. I realised within that outburst that I wanted to be forgiven. I’d done something bad, something shameful. I asked him - ‘Do you forgive me?’ He said nothing, the way he did on the day of the accident. Now more than ever, I wanted to hear it. I started to cry harder. ‘Do you forgive me? Why don’t you forgive me? I was only a kid. I tried to do the right thing, and I made a mistake. My back was broken, what else do you want me to feel?’ As he stared down with that same cold and eternal gaze I realised that even though he is a real person, what I’m seeing is a stored emotion. A distillation of that traumatic moment and the crystallised being of my own internal conflict, and my mind was showing me exactly what I needed to see.

The door was open, and I had well and truly stepped through. My epiphany was laid out in front of me.

Why did my mind show me this? To bring this out of me, of all of the terrible things I’ve experienced. It’s horrible. I’m crying. Even if I could track down that SAS guy, would I ask him for forgiveness? Would he even give it to me? Would it restore my purpose even if he did? Even if he forgave me, I had not forgiven myself.

The epiphany had landed. The source of my anxiety was that I was always trying to avoid disappointing people. That event was not the only contributing factor in my life, but it was certainly the most powerful. I couldn’t make decisions or say the right thing to someone because I was afraid of ridicule, or being caught in confrontation. I felt it was better to do nothing sometimes, rather than face the feelings of regret or shame from poor decisions or poor use of time. I was applying false positivity to situations in order to avoid the ugly truth. I realised it’s the self realisation and acceptance of truth, that set will set me free. I was ready to forgive myself… so I did, aloud. I had created a new imprint, embossed and shining. I had forgiven myself because I deserved forgiveness.

In my limited understanding of the brains complex nature, I feel like the simplest analogy to describe it is that it’s like a computer or a smartphone. We don’t know exactly how it works, but we know it works. The fundamental functions are all right there. I’ve got the learning app, the blog writing app, the fitness app, the cooking app, the sex app, the humour app. Things I can install and reprogram at a whim. Depression and anxiety are part of my system settings with the other things things I can’t erase, so I can only manage their symptoms or be ignorant to them. It’s part of my programming to feel emotionally overwhelmed or have lasting memories of trauma that I can’t delete. That psychedelic experience was like opening the anxiety tab under system settings and clicking the restore button. ‘Do you wish to return to factory default settings?’ I clicked yes. Fuck yes I want to. I still recall on and recognise the fears I feel, but I understand them better now.

Awareness of anxiety and depression is a powerful thing. To recognise it requires looking for it and not being afraid of what you’ll find.

‘When the penny drops’ is an idiom that’s used when someone finally puts two and two together. I realise now that I needed to fall, in order to find the ground.