It didn’t look that high from the ground. Just steps, just water, just a splash and it was done.

But from the top, it was sky. It was every mistake I’d ever made echoing beneath me. My toes curled around the edge as if they might learn to fly before I did.

The pool shrank into a postage stamp. The lifeguard looked bored. The kids behind me were waiting, dripping, loud.

I was still. Not brave. Just trapped between the ladder I couldn’t climb back down and the drop I didn’t think I could survive.

Someone shouted, “Just go!” But that was the thing; to go meant letting go of everything: the rail, the fear, the air inside my chest that I hadn’t exhaled in minutes.

And then, I did.

Not like flying. More like falling into the version of me that could.

Water cracked open like applause. I surfaced with stinging eyes and a grin I didn’t earn but kept anyway.

That night, the bed rocked like waves long after the pool closed. I knew three meters isn’t far unless it’s the first time you trust yourself to jump.