Deciding To Live

From "This I Believe" on NPR: Transcript and Podcast

Kij Johnson's Web Site

I believe I am a climber.

Three years ago, a series of medical and personal crises took what was a clinical depression and made it something much darker.

I
thought of it as falling — as jumping — off a bridge on a rainy winter
day: three seconds in the air before I hit the water and plunged deep
into the icy cold, my heavy coat pulling me deeper. And the surface far
overhead — too far away.

This is the question that kept me from
making the image a real one. What if I changed my mind? Jumping into
the water, the air in my lungs would fail me before I could swim back
to the living world. I would know for those last seconds that I did
want to live after all, but it would be too late.

I'm not sure why I started climbing.