Freefalling - “My death was so close I could almost touch it”

When Emma Carey went skydiving in Switzerland, the unthinkable happened: her parachute malfunctioned and – at age 20 – she became paraplegic. Almost a decade on, the Canberra-born artist, who has learnt to walk again, revisits that fateful day

It started like this. The deafening beats of the propellers matched the thundering of my heart. I felt electric as the ground shrank beneath us, snow-capped mountains disappearing into the landscape. I was startled by my own insignificance as the helicopter continued dizzyingly upwards. An anxiety that I hadn’t been expecting caught in my throat, and the memory of my signature over a dotted line flashed back to me. Suddenly the danger laid out in a black-and-white liability form felt somewhat plausible.

My hand entwined with my friend Jemma’s, I turned to my instructor. Eager for reassurance, I asked how many times he had jumped. The number was absolutely staggering, and this reassured me.

And then, before I knew it, it was time. Fourteen thousand feet [4270 metres] in the air, the door of the helicopter opened and, as the wind rushed in, it felt as if all my senses were coming alive. This sensation is what I’d been craving, this is what my life – in all its daily monotony – had been missing.

Strapped to my instructor, I turned towards the door and a new version of myself. For a moment we sat on the edge of the helicopter, legs dangling in the space between who I was and who I was about to become. And then I was falling.