GOING WILD

A short story by Jane Riley

- 

Emma can’t believe what she’s about to do. In her most fanciful daydreams, this has never been one of them.

She is someone who errs on caution, thinks before she speaks though always before she metaphorically jumps. She gets enough of an adrenaline rush letting herself go mad on the dance floor than doing anything as nonsensical as bouldering on a fake indoor rock face, let alone on a real mountain. She gets vertigo thinking about it.

Yet it’s clear to her now that occasionally she’s had moments of craving spontaneity and adventure but had dismissed them as the crazy thoughts of a tired primary school teacher, mother and partner. She’s imagined heliskiing over the Alps or, throwing caution to the wind (in a different way) going to the airport with only the clothes you're wearing and taking the next available flight abroad.

But it usually takes a profound, life-altering event to bring out a side of you that you never knew existed. For Emma, it wasn’t just one but the culmination of three events over the past year which triggered the change. One of them had been inevitable, two were not.

The first was turning forty. Time suddenly felt as if it were slipping away and she was on a continuous loop of doing the same things on repeat. Her self-confidence, instead of increasing, had stalled. She was feeling less at home in her body than ever before. Her bottom was now dimpled, her skin freckled and sun-damaged. She wants, at least, to be able to look at her naked self in the mirror, if not go around unclothed with the self-assurance of an undressed toddler.

As her birthday neared, the fear that this was as good as it was going to get filled her with increasing dread, only to climax in a next-day birthday-dinner hangover and a lingering angst.