When I was a kid — like many all across America — I’d pretend I was Superman. 

Nearly every night, you could find me wearing worn-out, Christover Reeve-era Superman pajamas and a cape running through the living room, into the TV room (the same room, but we acted like they were different), turning right through the kitchen and then taking one last sharp right down the hallway back to where I started — my little cape that I imagined was flapping with force behind me, lazily being bumped by the back of my legs as I dashed around. 

To me, the idea that there was a person or even something that could save me was satisfying. 

Just as someone is falling to their death and it seems like all hope is lost …

SWOOOOSH

They’re in his arms, safe and sound. 

I thought one day I could be that, that one day I could be a Superman. 

Instead, here I find myself the proverbial damsel in distress day after day. 

I’ve slipped off the roof, and unfortunately for me, it’s been at least 27 years since I lost my cape. 

I’m falling. 

I’m falling like I have most of my life to the point that I can’t remember anymore what it felt like to have feet planted on solid ground, to just feel like I wasn’t about to simply plummet to a new depth at any second without resistance.

And you know what’s the funniest thing? 

Even though I know there’s no possibility of it happening — even though I know with absolute certainty that he’s a pure fiction, a creation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster decades before I was even born — I still find my eyes desperately waiting to spot a Superman. 

I’m still holding on to the little hope that I’ll feel a hand or arms or anything wrapping themselves around me and carrying me back to safety with a wink and smile. 

But I know no one’s coming. 

I don’t believe I have any more of those second chances left. 

No. 

This time, every part of my being knows that I’m only going to feel the pavement. 

But only for a moment.

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