Advanced Essay #1: I Didn't Jump I Was Pushed

I Didn’t Jump I Was Pushed

We turned the corner to the sounds of screaming. Just what we had been looking for. As we walked out of the forest into the light the sounds intensified and relief filled my body. The green trees were a beautiful background as sticks stopped crunching beneath our feet and gave way to smooth stone. Before us was a beautiful blue lake the deepest type of blue. We saw a boy jump as we got closer, the water rushing up to meet him. Splash. Yup I was back in Maine alright. Bar Harbor to be exact. It had been the location of our summer home for a long as I had been aware. I hadn’t been to my home state in six months and whenever I go back I always think about how much life had changed.

My middle school was in Auburn, Maine. A solid eight-hour drive from Philadelphia. I didn’t really fit in there. I had my friends but they weren’t truly my friends, they weren’t the type of people that I could trust the way I wanted to. I didn’t have much confidence at all, I let people walk all over me. I wondered how to change all the time. How to be cool, how to look like nothing bothered me like the coolest kids did. At that time we didn’t have much money. My dad, my brother and I all squeezed into a one-bedroom apartment for a year with no air-conditioning. Kids would say they loved my shoes. Mocking. I wore new balances, oblivious, and when the teasing started I didn’t have other shoes. I tried to change, tried to figure out what made me such an easy target. I told myself late at night that I would stop doing certain things and people would leave me alone. I had almost achieved my goal when my dad told me we were moving.

There was a lower jump and mom said we should take that first so we walked down the small path. I could feel my sandals losing their novelty as I slid-walked down the dirt path. My first experience with jumping off ledges into bodies of water had been off a bridge. That time it had taken me 40 minutes to jump. Off this little jump I drilled myself that I was going to jump in right away and that’s what I did. Straight up, then down, sinking, cold, and air again.     

“Oh wow Micah,” my mom. She jumped in after, the water jumping away from her straight up into the air. I was anxious as I got out of the water. It was time for the big jump.

I remember being so nervous my first day of school at SLA. I wasn’t wearing new balances but I was acutely aware of anything someone might find wrong with me in this alien place. But I was hopeful, I could be whoever I wanted in this new place.

My first friend at SLA was Mamadou Samassa one of my closest friend now. Basketball started and I made friend after friend and I was different but not really. I copied the way they talked but I also laughed more, we went out everyday. School was fun, interesting I liked my classmates and I could just chill be me.

As I climbed back up the path I remembered that the trick is to not think. I got on the back of the cliff got a running start and jumped… up then down, down straight into the water fast way too fast. Crash. I let myself sink for moments, my heart still racing then pushed myself back up where the air was.

“How was it,” my grandmother.

“Scary,” I said. “Very scary.”

I jumped into Philly in the same manner. Thrust into a completely new situation yet I didn’t jump I was pushed. Cliff jumping had nothing had on that day. I changed a little but not as much as I thought. I had friends we called each other brothers and I tried to be kind to everybody to be someone my middle school me would like. I think a lot of people think there’s something wrong with them when they’re in a situation that’s not working out. That for some reason they’re missing something everybody else, that they’ll be stuck as a caterpillar forever, but I don’t think that’s the case.  Maybe some of us just need a little bit more time in our cocoon.