What do you do when the fall arrives?

Where do you land?

Into alcohol? Drugs? Going all-in at poker or taking one more pill than usual?

No… not exactly.

My fall was of a different kind.

I think I slipped through the chairs.

Between 103 students in a “Z-level” high school class in north Tel Aviv, between boys and girls—chairs upon chairs—I fell through the gap.

Everyone else seems to belong somewhere.

Everyone sits comfortably in a chair that holds them up.

They sit on money, cigarettes, grades that barely reach fifty, and on each other—but somehow, they remain steady.

They all have someone to call after their first kiss, someone for a quick chat, someone to drink too many vodka shots with and throw up the next morning.

To me, “someone” is overrated.

What good is it if you’re here, but not really present?

Everyone else has you, but I don’t.

Everyone turns to you, yet you aren’t even saved in my contacts.

I don’t have a “someone.”

That’s what happens when you fall between the chairs—

usually no one falls with you.

When I hit the ground, I wondered what I was supposed to do now.

Oh—so this is the moment I’m meant to start drinking?

To steal a cigarette from my dad?

Because I have no one else, right?

I’m already down here.

For a long time, no one was around me.

My thoughts were loud enough; I didn’t need to make anything worse.

Mom, Dad—leave me alone.

I’m tired, I’m sad, I’m hungry.

I feel too much, think too much, and I think I need to go.

Go where?

I didn’t have a role back then.

I wasn’t anyone’s “someone,” and I certainly didn’t have someone of my own.

So I was alone—just me with myself.

Another day passed, and another, and I was still on the floor while everyone else sat on royal chairs.

And between them, I had fallen.

Everything around me felt dark.

After a meeting with my teacher, something shifted.

What do you mean?

Isn’t everything I’m dealing with already enough?

Now I need good grades too?

Teachers need to like me?

I need to do something with my life?

But I’m down here, remember?

There’s nowhere lower to go.

Wait—

There’s nowhere lower to go.

No more falling.

No one left to fall with.

No tear that hasn’t already been shed, no money left to lose at poker, nothing else to throw away.

So what’s left for me to do?

Try.

Pick myself up and climb, chair by chair, until I reach one that’s truly—undeniably—mine.

So I did.

Suddenly my 10 became a 100.

I turned on the light in my room, let brightness flood in, and left all my old clothes and old selves behind.

I started playing piano and drums, and suddenly my days grew softer, brighter, fuller.

I fell.

I fell between the chairs—between 103 students in a Z-level high school in north Tel Aviv.

Between boys and girls, chairs and chairs, I fell.

But once you hit the floor, you don’t need a hug or a kiss.

You take yourself by the hand and rise, because your potential is the one thing no one can steal from you.

It belongs solely to you.

And here I am, a year later—

sitting on a good, clean chair.

A chair built of grades above 80, of instruments, songs, and countless beautiful words.

I have meaning now, dreams now, and everything that once weighed me down—I leave behind.

I took my chair and wrapped it with a pink ribbon.

This gift is mine—

but no longer just for me.