Everybody has a fear of something that can paralyze them on the spot. I have this fear, which causes my legs to shake, sometimes even breaking out into a cold sweat. Thoughts of a certain death race through my mind, and the world appears to be a treasured place, a utopia. I imagine my own funeral, then am whisked quickly back into the horrors my thoughts produce. There is a simple reason for this feeling, I am deathly afraid of heights.

            Despite my fear, a few summers ago I somehow found myself climbing to a high place, my body trembling with every inch upward. My cousins had convinced me to go with them to a cliff-diving spot while we were on vacation. The area itself was breathtaking, a grass covered opening ending sharply at a rocky cliff, with deep blue water splashing against the cliff’s base. My cousins had convinced me it was completely safe to jump into the water below.

            We sat by the edge on benches constructed to watch divers, eating lunches we had brought. Several divers jumped while I was eating, and they seemed to enjoy themselves, but I wasn’t ready to make the plunge yet. As we finished our lunches, my cousins began to take off their t-shirts, since we dressed in our bathing suits before we arrived. My oldest cousin, Jeff, jokingly asked me if I wanted to jump first, since he knew I was afraid of heights. I weakly commented back but it hadn’t any effect. Jeff understood there was no way I was going to go first so he decided to lead the dive himself. With a running start he jumped off, curling his body together into a ball on the way down.

            I watched Jeff jump, and briefly looked over the edge and down to see the splash, I regretted looking for the drop seemed to fall for miles. I heard him calling from the water below that I was to go next, and to my horror my cousins agreed. I undressed into my bathing suit, and walked over to the edge for one last look down before I attempted to convince my body to jump. Little did I know that my cousins had plotted for me to do this, and promptly pushed me, and I lost my balance and fell. My body flailed, and I screamed, but before I knew it I was in the water, already resurfacing. Jeff patted me on the back, laughed and asked me how it was.

            I’m not going to say that facing my fear of heights was easy, because it wasn’t. I admit that I probably wouldn’t have jumped if my cousins didn’t push me over the edge. This little push taught me that sometimes we need to accept help from others to push us through a personal crisis. Now, when I’m faced with a hurdle in life, I’m more willing to reach out for help from my friends and family, because that’s what their there for. There’s nothing better than when you face and defeat something that you have feared as far back as you can remember