I gasped for air, clutching the handle of my crutch so hard my knuckles popped to keep my weak legs from collapsing under me.
Images that felt foreign but familiar all at once—memories that my brain had entirely rejected as a trauma response—came rushing back in broken, jagged fragments.
It was the day of the college camping trip. I remembered walking away from the group since I wasn't needed and then seeing a pretty flower at the edge of a cliff. There was slippery mud at the edge of the cliff but I still decided to climb it anyway.
And then I fell.
I remembered the terrifying, weightless sensation of falling, the branches ripping at my skin, and then the final, bone-crushing impact at the very bottom of the ravine.
I suddenly remembered lying there in the dirt, paralyzed, staring up at the gray sky as my blood pooled in the dirt underneath me.
And then, the wind had stopped blowing.
