Chelsea Rodgers- Life

Drawing in a sharp gasp, I suddenly lose my grip.
The air around me begins to move, faster and faster, until there is a vibrating hum in my ear. My heart has quickly re-positioned itself in my throat, and my other internal organs fight to follow suit. I am free falling. With no control over my surroundings, my mind attempts to rationalize escape. Eventually, it issues a verdict: there is no hope. Completely subject to the whims of gravity, I am being harshly returned to my proper place on solid ground.
Whether I arrive there dead or alive is not important.

Although it is only a matter of seconds, it may as well be days. The constraining regulations of time have been abolished, and as the trees below become larger, their branches reach out to me, welcoming my fate with outstretched arms.
I have always heard people say that if you die in your dreams, you have actually died in real life. This is quite false. I have blown up on Mars and watched my limbs scatter through space, been run over by a fire truck, been chased by a clown into an elevator shaft, and been flung off the top of a roller-coaster. Each time this has happened, I have still managed to wake up with all of my body parts intact and my heart beating: a little bit faster than normal, maybe, but beating all the same. After a couple minutes, the gears of my sleepy brain begin to work again, and a feeling of total joy washes over me: I am ALIVE. Not “alive”, the small adjective found in a dictionary. ALIVE. All caps. There is blood flowing through my veins at this very moment. I am in my own bed, not dangling off the edge of a cliff. The air around me tastes much sweeter, and the dull glow of the clock radio next to me much friendlier. Why is it that so many people today do not know what it feels like to really be alive? We cannot wait for a nightmare to teach us how important each breath we take is.