It Is So God Damn Hard To Leave

But the arrival? That’s immediate. Every single time.

Photo by Kevin Wang on Unsplash

It is so god damn hard to leave. 

The job. The relationship. The safety zone. The life you know. The too-small container that you can navigate in your sleep.

There may be something infinitely better beckoning. You may know in every fiber of your being that you have to go. You may feel the misalignment deep in your bones. The pounding of your heart may have been charting your escape so long the path has already been worn thin. 

But still, fuck, it can be hard to leap. 

To look down beyond your feet at the gaping abyss, and to trust in your heart just long enough to find the faith that you’ll either fly or land—but somehow you’ll survive the freefall into the unknown.

Here in Arizona, where towering red rocks bake in the relentless sun over freezing desert streams, cliff jumping is a regular summer activity for the brave and the bored. 

This land is a land of extremes, made to push people to the edges of themselves, their capacity, their willingness to surrender. The lure of the water below, the escape it offers from the baking sun—it’s compelling. 

There are people, I’ve noticed, who just jump. 

No hesitation. No anxiety. No apparent fear. Just an approach and a leap. A zero hold back letting go of solid ground. Just like that. Like it’s nothing. LIke life will hold them, always.

There are some who don’t jump at all. Those who prefer to keep their feet planted on solid ground or float in the shallows or bake in the heat of that unending sun. 

I’m not either one of those kinds. 

I jump. Every time. It’s part of the contract I have with myself now.

But I take my damn time. 

I stand on the precipice forever. I measure the distance. I contemplate the sensation of free fall and the inevitable impact of body hitting water and the shock to the system of the cold and the way the water always knocks the breath out of me and goes up my nose. I calculate the relative safety of what I’m about to do.

Yes, the whole thing terrifies me.

Other people will jump 3, 4, 5 times, and I’ll still be standing there thinking, in my head about it, lost inside the confines of my body, breath tight and belly twisting. 

There’s no out. I don’t give myself one, not any longer. 

The me I want to be is one who leaps, every time. But god damn it, I can’t make it happen quickly, as much as I want to be that girl.

God damn, I want to be that girl.

It’s not fear, not really. It’s this negative anticipation. A brain and body that struggles for control, that often refuses to relinquish its grasp on the now in favor of the forever calling me forward. 

Yes, I am forever drawn to liminal spaces. To the siren song of the weightlessness and the unfathomless deep. But the transitions space of the unknown is never not terrifying. 

I can’t say that I like it, the terrifying suspended reality of the in-between.

It is true that in this life I have almost always stayed far past the time I knew I was going to go.

We know, of course, long before we step off the edge. 

We know we’re going to leave, just like I know I’m eventually going to leap. 

We always know, deep down, that we’re going to leave or leap or burn it all down. The knowing lives in our gut. In our breath. In the whispers we hear between sleep and awake. In the air around us. 

When we’re really honest with ourselves, we can often trace that knowing back to the beginning of the thing we tenaciously hold on to, despite all the ways it no longer fits or threatens our inherent wholeness.  

In some way, if we are honest to ourselves—when it comes to the leaving—we have always known. 

The old me brought injury to herself and to others in her insistence on awarding points to the stubborn insistence on staying as if the staying itself could redeem all harm. 

As if the ability to abide in space that no longer served or brought to life was how she would be judged at the end of days. 

She had already left enough times to have branded herself a lover of leaving, stealing a line from Rumi as if it marked her the way the Scarlet Letter A once marked Hester Prynne an adulteress. 

“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come.

― Jelaluddin Rumi

That version of me knew how to leave. For sure. She had practiced the leaving, the going, the burndown of what was. Like the words in that quote she held close, she had already broken her vows a thousand times. 

But still, staying long past the expiration date was her habit, deeply ingrained. She hadn’t read deep enough into Rumi’s words to understand that they were an invitation. That inherent in each act of leaving or leaping is an arrival. And that tucked into those words was grace and forgiveness and redemption. 

Come, you holy fumbling fuck up of a human, yet again come. 

It took me a long time to understand that the act of leaving was also an act of welcoming.

And so yes, the old me took forever to leave. 

Even when she knew. 

Even when there was no other choice.

And that old me, she’d never have jumped off a cliff at all.

She’d have watched and wanted to be that person. 

She’d have been envious of the ones who could make the leap again and again. 

She’d have sat on the shoreline and berated herself for her lack of audacity, her lack of bravery, her refusal to become. 

So what changed?

One day a few years ago (pre-covid, pre-isolation, pre-a world gone entirely mad) my friends and I went up north. We had created a little day-tripping group of fellow adventures desperate for wild spaces and open air. 

And because this is Arizona and we were city desert creatures seeking solace in water, we headed to the river, and there we found a cliff perfect for jumping. Not even a particularly high or frightening one. But high enough. The water a deep and dark and mysterious swirl below.

I wasn’t going to jump. I had pretty much decided. I wasn’t a jumper, not then. 

But then my friend's ten-year-old son raced up and lept off the way kids can do. Free, easy, no fear. 

My brain said, “Well if he can, you can”, and I made my way across the rushing creekbed, frozen feet sliding on slippery river rocks, talking myself into the action with every tentative step I took.

I climbed up the embankment, determined. But still, I hesitated, approached the edge, and stepped back, again and again, and over again. My body and my brain fighting each other over the few small seconds it would take to make that small leap over the margin where rock met air. 

Then my friend Keisha yelled out. 

“Who is in charge here? 

Are you going to be the Jeanette you have been or the Jeanette you want to become?”

“GOD DAMN IT ALL TO FUCK, Keisha”, I thought. 

“Now I have to jump.”

Because to hell with staying the Jeanette that I had been. The one who stayed in the confines of jobs and relationships and lives no longer meant for her. The one who watched from the sidelines, never quite ready to make the leap.

Yea, I had to jump off that cliff. 

Eventually, I did, the voices of my friends cheering me on and counting me down to keep me moving forward.

It wasn’t graceful or pretty. The shock of that cold river water hit my body hard and fast, water straight up my nose and skin stinging from the impact and the abrupt change in temperature. 

It was over in the space of a moment, the way leaving often is. In a way that made it impossible to ignore the messy and brilliant humanness of my existence. 

But at that moment I came to know myself in a different way. 

As the girl who will always choose to leap. 

As the girl who learned that each leaving was an invitation, both forward into what came next, and back home to what has always been. 

It still wasn't easy. 

I didn’t just do it. 

It still took time.

I still made it harder and longer than I had to. 

Maybe I always will.

But my contract with myself changed that day. The narrative I wrote about leaving was forever altered. 

Because hell yes, I jumped. The Jeanette that I was and the Jeanette that I wanted to be held hands and we leapt. 

We did it. 

No matter how long it takes, I think, it’s that moment that actually matters. 

Not the length of time or the amount of fear or how deeply you agonize over the repercussions and the hows and the whys and the whens.

Not how graceful you look in the freefall or how delicately you land. Not the way the shock wakes your body or what you need after the leaping is done. 

What matters is the moment of choice, the willingness to be suspended for that fraction of a second in the terrifying in-between. 

And not even the choice itself, really between jumping or not jumping (or leaving and not leaving).

In the end, it’s the audacity it takes to make any choice at all. The willingness to leap or the fortitude to stay or the seemingly unending middle in-between. 

The bravery to step into the freefall of the unknown, to let the shock of impact rock your body to brilliant life.

The strength to remain still and focus on the solid ground beneath your feet until the moment you’re ready to take the next step. 

Yes, it can take a long time to leave. 

But the invitation? That’s eternal.

The welcome? That’s guaranteed. 

And the arrival? That’s immediate. 

Every single time.