Falling: Do you see it happening?

Last night I was walking across the street on a well-known campus here in Indiana, and somewhere between talking to the person next to me and looking forward to the event we were trekking to, I managed to step into a pot hole, twist my ankle and fall flat on my face in the middle of the icy road.

Now, before any of you who are aware of my ever-clutzy state just roll your eyes and shake your head at me, thinking, "That's a typical Jessie thing," I'd like to qualify it with the fact that it could have been made a lot worse but I had thought ahead and put the three inch heels I had planned on wearing back in the closet in favor of my snow boots.

Anyway, as I was quite literally rolling around on the ground laughing because I realized my stupidity (and because everyone else was laughing, so I figured why not) I realized that I hadn't even known I was falling until I was on the ground and pain pierced my ankle and knee.

For those concerned, I am fine. Just a scraped up knee and slightly swollen ankle ail me now.

But as I got back on my feet and we made our way through the night without any further incident (except for me once again succumbing to my ditzy moments and whacking my head on the seemingly random handle on the passenger dashboard of a fifteen passenger van) I realized that even as I looked back on it, I definitely didn't realize I was falling while it was actually happening. Like I stated, I was simply walking and talking (a usually easy combination, unless you're someone like me, apparently) and the next think I know my hands are extremely cold because of the frozen asphalt, and the pain started.

When you really think about it, why is it that we can't consiously remember these little incidents? I imagine that my eyes closed instinctively as my body was pummeling forward to save the soft treasures within the lids, but beyond that, I didn't feel anything. You would think that as your body, especially that of an adult who is over five foot tall and holds a bit of weight, was falling towards the ground around five feet away, you'd feel a similar feeling as to if you were on a roller coaster or the like. I'm sure there's some sort of scientific explanation containing some absurdly complicated equation with force and motion or whatever, but honestly, I'm not interested.

What I'm getting at, finally, is that things like this happen all the time in a less physical way. People say often that they never really realized that they were learning something, they just had a moment where they seemed to know it. Similarly, people say sometimes when they meet someone and spend time with them that they never realized they were falling in love - they just know that they enjoy spending time with them until all of the sudden they are overcome with an abundance of feeling for that person and they can no longer see their lives without them.

Like my knee and ankle though, these kinds of realizations of falling or learning sometimes lead to much more substantial injuries. You learn something and that's great for you - in that aspect there's not much negative. But in the topic of love, there's always room for insult and injury. You fall for someone and depending on different interpretations of events and conversations, it may not be reciprocated. Or even if it is, like one of my professors said today, "All relationships end (with death being one reason)."

I guess that logic gets into the stickiness of love being both a good and bad thing, so I'll save myself from accusations of being a cynic once again and stop while I'm ahead.

I wish we could see ourselves falling though. An out of body kind of thing would no doubt be creepy and too much to ask, but if we could just stop a minute and gather our wits and know what's going on around us, we might be able to catch things before they get bad and you're crumbled and broken in the darkness that no one deserves to be.

But then again, there's always the chance that that pot hole comes out of nowhere and you're flat on your face.