My first skydive

I remember about 4 years ago, my girlfriend at the time had wanted to go skydiving. I was always concerned about the cost, but we DID go. I had always been trying very hard to find things that she and I could do together. We had a lot in common, did many things together, but I was keen to keep things interesting between us and do many different things together. With that intention, I got really into the idea of getting certified to skydive and even bought the SIM manual to study and train for certification so we could jump without assistance. That wasn't quite what she had in mind, but she sure wanted to skydive.

We finally made arrangements to dive that summer. The day finally came around and it was a beautiful clear sunny day, like so many of them are around here. We met with her friend and some family at the airport and then went through a brief training video. Then, it was out to the plane. The plane could only take 4 people at a time, and since we were required to jump tandem we had to split up between either me and my girlfriend, or she and her friend. Pleasantly my girlfriend stuck with me and after we watched her friend dive it was finally our turn. We put on our jump suits and packed into a plane you WOULD want to jump out of, with 2 dive instructors who would be our tandem jumpers. She was with the tall guy, I was with the round guy. The plane took off and it seemed like it took forever to get us into the sky. On the flight up we could see all kinds of things; my house, her house, LIGO, Hanford reach, all of the cities etc etc. It was a really cool view. The way we were loaded into the plane made it such that she would jump first and I would jump second. It went just like that; she jumped, with her tandem jumper, and they were gone, gravity works, then it was my turn. My tandem jumper and I moved to the edge of the plane and I sat out, looking down for my girlfriend/her jumper. Immediately I felt sick because I couldn't see them, the next thing I hear, "keep your eyes open, I'm going to flip you." And then we were gone. I kept my eyes open, watched as the plane seemed to just lazily drift away, and then I was looking at the ground again, and looking and looking. It really felt like a long time; I was able to look around, notice a few things and take in that you actually get to freefall for a fair amount of time. I finally saw my girlfriends shoot, and felt a lot better; by the time I was taking that in he pulled the shoot and we began the float down to the landing pad. My tandem jumper gave me the cords to steer for a while, but my arms began to cramp up and he took them back and we slowly made so arcs as we came into the landing zone. We landed and all was well, but when people came up to me they said I looked sick.

I told them all that I was just afraid of heights, but that was never the whole truth. Yes, I was/am afraid of heights, but what really got me so sick was when, looking off the edge of that plane, looking for my girlfriend, looking for her shoot, and not seeing any sign of them; all the horrible thoughts that I had, that I had lost her, that she had died, that I'd never see her again, witnessing something that horrible, it all scared me so sick, but I could never and never did tell her...

Now, I'm suddenly interested in diving again and I just may have to pursue that if I get any time.