The fear of falling is perhaps our most primal anxiety. It’s the stuff of nightmares, the visceral ones from which we wake with a jerk. Our safety net, in this case, is consciousness. It’s as simple as opening our eyes.
I haven’t fallen many times in my life. Physically, at least. I’ve lost control metaphorically, in all the romantic and professional and moral ways that one does. But luckily, I can count on half of one hand the number of times my body has hit the ground violently.
The earliest I remember was in junior high. Standing on an unstable chair, I fell and broke a bone for the first and only time, to date. That toe still bends funny.
The most recent was this summer, during a trip to the South of France. Arriving at a broad alley of the Saturday market in Aix-en-Provence, I was dazzled by the intensity of the sunlight and activity all around me. Bright like a postcard—with colorful table linens hung from the top of stands and people bunched around piles of tapenade and spices, or soap or baskets or bread—the market seemed to stretch out in all directions.
I turned and stepped off an uneven half-curb. Leaning diagonally into suspended time, my arms waved awkwardly, instinctively seeking counterbalance. How, in the midst of this bustling crowd, is there suddenly nothing and no one around me to grab onto and buffer this fall? I remember hearing a small whimper escape just before I hit the stone pavement on my side, hard. Knees and elbow, then ribcage, shoulder and, finally, my head.
A man from across the street was the first to reach me, offering his hand and saying, “You’re the second person to do that.” Small comfort, that.
Sunday morning, after a sleepless night, each movement and breath was accompanied by a sharp pain in my ribs. My partner, John, and I followed GPS to the nearest hospital emergency center, where we spent about 4 hours in the waiting room—society’s great leveler.
A dark, wizened man with a high voice—a child’s voice—along with his two daughters wailed biblically near us until they were moved to a private room. A young man on crutches, more parts of his body wrapped in bandages than not, recovered from a motorcycle accident. A little girl was excited to tell everyone how she had burned her finger.
Many cases were deemed more urgent than mine and went ahead of me. This made sense, especially since, that morning, dressing to see the doctor, I had picked the most respectable dress from my suitcase, paired with a sensible, closed-toe shoe. I looked like I was there for a job interview.
Post-diagnosis (rib contusion, not fracture—painful and slow-healing, nonetheless), I stopped at the front desk and paid my bill, out of pocket: the equivalent of about $60. Then we went to the pharmacy to pick up my two prescriptions, total: $15.
This time the safety net arrived after I hit the ground, but I was no less grateful for it.
Some of the travelers in our group groused at the inconveniences of traveling abroad, and of life in France in particular: inadequate signage and narrow roads, the lack of laundry dryers, all the mystifying etiquette around meals. Yes, I want to say, those things and more are true, but they had my heart at unpasteurized dairy and socialized medicine.
A few days later we visited Cassis and went to the top of Cap Canaille, the second-highest point on the whole Mediterranean. There were no rails, no fences, just a clifftop with a soaring view over the rocks and sea below. It was like being hung in the sky.
We each negotiated internally how far from the edge was comfortable. The fear was not how easy it would be to fall, but how easy it would be to jump—to cross that thin membrane into the abyss. The ever-philosophical French have a phrase for this, too: L’appel du vide, the call of the void. It thrilled me in a way that made me hyper-awake, turned up the volume on all my senses.
The feeling haunted me for many nights, revisited in those liminal moments just before sleep. Hovering near the rocky edge, my body shimmers, almost dematerialized, merging with the blue above and the blue beneath.
The return Stateside came as a rude awakening, the vacation hangover kicking in right away. I had been dropped from my health insurance, so I found an agent to help me navigate the Marketplace. We compared plans and I fretted over deductibles and co-pays, premiums and yearly limits—finally choosing one and signing up. I’m fortunate to be able to purchase some measure of coverage, but I am now, like millions of other Americans, afraid of the next fall, of how serious it will be and whether I will be able to afford the consequences.
