My aversion to Bridges

I was seven, and it was summer, and I had a new friend. She was tagging along with her sister’s friends, and I was tagging along with hope—because I hadn’t had a friend since we moved, and I needed to keep this one.

We came across a log bridge, narrow and slick, stretching over a small dip in the ground. It wasn’t far to fall, but it looked endless to me. I said I was scared. She said I could do it. I believed her.

So I crawled on. The log shifted, soft under my thighs. I slid forward another inch, slow and shaky, my fingernails digging into the wood like the world might fall if I didn’t hold tight. Someone cheered—bright, proud—and for a second, I thought I was doing it. I thought I was brave.

Then someone shook the bridge. A laugh, a careless hand from someone who had already crossed, and a cruel idea—and the log jumped under me. My body froze. The world tilted. I slipped, barely catching the edge; my hands scraped against bark. Breath snagged in my throat.

The older kids laughed—loud, thoughtless, endless—and the sound filled the air until it swallowed everything. I don’t remember what I yelled, or if I even did. I just remember the tears sliding down my face when I realized I was still alive.

The gap was small—small enough to let go and fall down, though I didn’t know that then. That fear was one of the biggest things I’d ever felt. She climbed down first and told me to follow. I did. We went home.

I don’t remember what we said—only the trembling and the way my throat hurt from breathing too hard. Later, she told me she’d gone back and yelled at them—made sure they knew it wasn’t funny. That stayed with me too: that someone had cared enough to be angry on my behalf.

But something else remained on that log. Maybe the excitement. Maybe the trust. Maybe the part of me that believed bravery meant being unafraid.

I haven’t walked on a log bridge since. Maybe it’s silly—it wasn’t high, it wasn’t long—but every bridge since then hums with that same tremor. Wood, rope, steel—it doesn’t matter. My body remembers before my mind does: the wobble, the laughter, the moment joy tipped into fear.

For years, I told myself it was silly—to hate a bridge. But I still do. Not the bridge itself, but the boys who laughed. The ones who thought it was nothing, who walked away before the sound faded from my ears. They never knew what they took.

They got to keep their laughter. I got to keep the anger.

And sometimes I still feel it—the wobble, the laughter, the moment joy tipped into fear,and the silence that came after, when I knew I’d never cross the same way again.