I DID IT!!!!

You may remember a few weeks ago I talked about how I was going to be jumping off a building for Charity. Well, as the title suggests, I went through with it! I have to admit; this is not the post that I thought I would be writing. Honestly, I was halfway between hoping that I would be doing a big bragging post like “HELL YEAH, I GOT IT DONE!!!!” and scared that the title of this post would be “I couldn’t do it.” What’s interesting, though, is that while I was able to do it, I’m sitting here writing this post thinking about why I overcame my fears. To be clear, I was scared about what was going to happen on that day, and I had had a couple of panic attacks between my last post about this and this one, but after I got down, I ran through my head about the reasons I was able to overcome my fears.

1) The build-up and the experience – It was back in December when I was sitting at the dining room table with my parents when the idea of rappelling off an office tower first got pitched to me. To be clear, I was sitting in a comfortable chair at ground level when I excitedly exclaimed, “That would be amazing! I’m totally in!” It’s funny how your fear of heights doesn’t seem to be a factor when you are at the ground level. All the same, I agreed to participate, and when the signup got e-mailed to everyone I work with, I was one of the first to sign up. I raised money and was talking people up about going and how fun it could be, all the while in the back of my mind, silently freaking out about having to go over the edge of a 20-storey building. I was invited to a practice session a week before the actual event, and I assumed it would be easier for me if I did a rappel off a lower height. I could not have been more wrong. As I have a genuine fear of heights, I’m not afraid to say that I couldn’t do the 60-foot rappel. Part of the problem was that I saw the ground and got spooked.

I went home and confessed to my wife that I didn’t go through with the practice to my wife. She knew how scared I was and how freaked out at unstable heights I was. She still listened to me and all of the things I was freaked out about, and when I was done, she looked me dead in the eye and said, “Well, It wasn’t ‘Gameday,’ was it?”

I love her so much…..

2) I wanted to prove that I could – Having not been able to do the practice, and knowing that my wife was entirely on board, knowing I could make the leap, I knew that I had to go through with it. It’s not that anyone would have said anything about it if I hadn’t, but I didn’t want to wake up the following day and think to myself that I should have, or I wished that I had done it. Doing this rappel was, for me, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and not going through with it would have been disappointing me. I also knew that my Adventure buddy Karim who would be rappelling with me, would support anything I wanted to do. Having my buddy there for me was When I got to the top of the roof, there was a practice area about six feet high where you get the feeling of going over the edge of the building. I am proud to say that I could do that with relative ease, despite a bit of trepidation. After the training, we walked over to where we would be doing the actual rappel, and the small amount of trepidation got bigger. As I walked to the edge, I made a conscious effort not to look over the side. If I looked down, I knew that I would have a much easier time talking myself out of it than going through with it. I looked at the guy who was in charge of my safety at the top (an awesome guy named Dan), and he was able to give me the confidence to go over the edge.

3) Going down the building was super scary – The first three feet of the rappel, I experienced quite a bit of terror. I was doing something that humans are not strictly designed to do. I was lowering my whole body over the side of a huge building and hoping, like nothing else, that the ropes and the harness I was wearing would hold. They did, and everything went just fine. I found that after the first three feet or so of rappelling down, I had much more confidence in myself and my ability to control the rope I was holding to get myself down. I was also made more confident knowing how many safety precautions the team running the event had in place. It also helped that, at three feet down, I was somewhat committed to the event at that point. It helped that, as I was going down, I could hear my wife and kids and other family members screaming encouragement at me. I could hear “YOU GOT THIS BABE!!!!” from the ground, and having that helped. I’m not entirely sure I would have been able to do it without their support.

4) I had no regrets – Honestly, I didn’t want to wake up the following day thinking that I wished I had gone through with it and hadn’t. Doing an event like this only comes along every once in a while. The trick is that you need to be able to go for it despite your fear. Yes, it was scary, and I think I handled myself well, and I’m really glad I did it. The “Would you do it again?” question has been asked of me several times since I went. This week? No. The next week? Probably not. Sometime after that?….. I don’t know….maybe? I was shaking like a leaf after I came down, and it took me a good four hours to stop, but I was pretty proud that I did it. It also helped that during a three-day event where I was one of the first to go off the building, whenever I saw someone looking a little pale at the thought of what they were about to do, I did what I could to talk them through the experience. I would also be among the chorus of people shouting ground-level encouragement. As I’m writing this post, I’ve got about 50% of my voice back, but it’s in and out.

I think that it’s good to challenge yourself every once and a while. It’s important to push your boundaries occasionally so that when you need to push your limits, the next time, you know that you can. Rappelling off the side of an office tower was, by far and away, the scariest thing I think I’ve ever done. I wanted to do it for a bunch of reasons, but the most important one was so that I could prove to myself that I could. If you never stretch your boundaries, you won’t know what you’re capable of. If you do branch out every once and a while, there is no telling what you can do. I want to thank the members of the Night to Fight MS Rappelling team. Karim Kassam, Jonathan Allenger and Justin Miyama, you guys were great. Thank you so much for participating in this event with me. To the MS Society of Canada members, including David White, Susana Tyson, Sarah Mann, Graham Metzger and Kaitlyn Heard, who were just as terrified as I was but made the jump anyway, you all rock! I’m so proud of each and every one of you. As for everyone at KingSett, I am so grateful to all of you who participated in the event. As someone with MS, it was wonderful to see how many of you were willing to participate without question. Thank you all for all the fundraising you did.

What scares you? Would you try it anyway?

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