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Would you like to know how it feels to fall in love with Seeley Booth?
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The first time I remember feeling like this, I had yet to meet him. I was sixteen, still just a child, living with foster parents that I hated. I ran away. I ran down the street, through a park, and up a hill. I ran until I came to a water tower.
Sixteen year old girls do not act rationally, which is why I can't explain my reasons for climbing the water tower that night. Slowly, pushing with my feet and pulling with my arms, I scaled the ladder all the way to the top.
The air was cold, a welcome respite from the suffocating heat of the trunk in which they had locked me. My lungs burned with every breath. The stars were brilliant, glittering mysteriously in the velvety night. There was a low rail surrounding the platform at the top of the tower. Cautiously, I approached the edge.
That was when I felt it. My stomach flipped over, figuratively, of course. Adrenaline coursed through my veins at the sight of the drop before me. At my estimation, approximately 37 or 38 meters of air separated me from the ground. An urge rose in me, unbidden and terrifying. I wanted to jump.
I grasped the rail as a wave of vertigo swept over me. My pulse raced beneath my skin. Forcing myself to close my eyes, I took in several intentional breaths, sending oxygen back to my brain. I turned and lunged back towards the safety of the tower, leaning my back against the cool steel and sinking to the floor.
If I had jumped, if I'd succumbed to to gravity's seductive pull, I would most certainly have died. Terrified, I examined my motives. Did I want to die?
No.
Even after all I had endured- my parents' disappearance, my brother's abandonment, my foster family's abuse- I wanted to live. I wanted to be alive. I had closed myself off to feeling anything, good or bad, out of self preservation. I wanted to feel something, feel alive.
Standing, I slowly opened my eyes and carefully crept back towards the railing. When I reached edge, I grabbed the metal bars and experimentally looked back towards the ground. It hit me instantaneously, overwhelming me with it's magnetic pull.
The drop. So deadly, but so enticing. Would it be worth it, I wondered, those few short moments of exhilarating abandon? The thrill of the fall? To finally yield to the power of gravity?
...But relinquishing the urge and surrendering control back to the rational part of my brain, I climbed back down the ladder.
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After that, I sought out high places intentionally. The Great Trango Towers in Pakistan. The Empire State Building. El Capitan. I love that feeling, the bewitching pull of the fall. Every time, though, I have overcome it. Every time, I have resisted.
Then along came Seeley Booth.
I feel myself drawn to him, drawn to the edge of the cliff. Peering over the precipice, I am both enticed and terrified. I feel like I'm at the top of the water tower again.
Vertigo, sweet, incapacitating vertigo whenever he smiles at me. My pulse races at his touch, even at his nearness. I feel myself teetering, fighting to resist and to succumb at the same time.
To fall in love with Booth, to risk everything? There is nothing more dangerous. It would most assuredly end with the destruction of everything I am. There is no way I could survive that drop. But to let go? To fall into him? It tempts me every moment, enticing me with the promise of feeling. The promise of letting go.
Some days, it is all I can do to resist him. The compulsion is overwhelming. Magnetic.
Fear holds me back, but just barely. I worry that there will come a day when I can no longer overcome the urge to jump. One day, gravity will get the better of me.
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Would you like to know what it's like to fall in love with Seeley Booth?
Go find the highest cliff or tallest building that you can. Go up there, I dare you, and let yourself peer over that edge. You'll feel it. I guarantee that you'll feel it- the thrill, the jolt of adrenaline, the seductive promise of the fall.
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So, the urge to jump is actually a real thing. It's called "High Place Phenomenon". Pretty interesting stuff. You should google it! ;)
I would like at add that I am not actually encouraging anyone to jump off a cliff. Just commenting on the feeling you get when you look at the ground from a great height and its parallels to falling in love. That's all.