The Fall

Before the fall, she had been envisioning bliss at the bottom. Now, she was simply terrified.

1

In the first moment, she remembered what her mother had said to her once about what to do if you find yourself falling off a building. She had said, don’t waste your final moments feeling terrified, or sad about your life’s imminent end. Instead, enjoy them. Imagine something good. Remember something good. You may not have control over your body any more, but you have control over your mind. These words were easier said with one’s feet safely on the ground.

2

She hadn’t expected to be so young when she died. Part of the reason she always thought she’d die at twenty-five, by her own hand, however, was because of exactly that – she didn’t want to see herself grow old and wither away. She thought, bittersweetly, of the music her father used to play in the kitchen as he made dinner – Blondie’s Die Young, Stay Pretty. Even the sore irony of it all, she thought, is that suicide rates decrease the older you get. People become happier as they wither away.

3

One of the main reasons she was now terrified, rather than feeling relieved, was the fact that the answers to everything had miraculously come to her as soon as she had jumped. That’s what they always say, right? As soon as you decide to end your seemingly senseless world, everything in it suddenly makes sense. In her morbid curiosity with those who were actively suicidal (rather than passively, which encompassed, she’d thought, about ninety per cent of humanity) she had watched a documentary called The Bridge, about the Golden Gate Bridge and those who had willingly jumped off of it. All those who survived, had regretted their decisions, realizing their life was so much more than some very solvable problems.

4

But what if your life – all it’s problems, solvable or not – now meant nothing for one, all-to-true reality: the ever-approaching ground. But she didn’t know how fast the ground was approaching – she had thrown herself off the roof backwards, and was looking up into the clear, blue sky. There hadn’t been a day this beautiful in months, she thought.

5

The truth was, she couldn’t quite lay a finger on why she jumped. Why, why, why. Why does anyone do anything? For control, for revenge. No, not revenge – vindication. Even those words still weren’t right. It was a deeper feeling, written in her bones. It would always have come to this. She didn’t quite fit in.

Oh, so boring, she thought. I didn’t fit in, so now I’m throwing myself off a building. What a ridiculously cliched sob story. It had to be more than that. It was a worse sin than being suicidal – it was being boring. Maybe she was boring, after all. Nobody is actually as fascinating as they think they are. That’s a close second worst sin – narcissism.  

6

And then she remembered Evelyn Hale, the woman who jumped from the 86^th floor of the Empire State Building and landed, beautifully poised on the roof of a car below, legs daintily crossed even in death, clutching a suicide letter. Bitterly, she regretted that she hadn’t written a note. Only 25% of college students leave notes, though, she told herself consolingly. She was only a statistic now. But the reason she had remembered Evelyn Hale in the first place were the contents of the suicide letter.

7

Hale was engaged to be married, just like her. In her letter, Hale had written, “I don’t think I’d make a good wife for anyone.” She recognized these words in herself. It was not for a lack of love. She had a lot of love for him, whose name was Noah, and now she could only picture his eyes. She used a split second of precious time to recall a memory – one of her favorites – of Noah taking a drag of his cigarette, standing a few feet away from her, maintaining eye contact all the way. Your eyes, she’d thought at the time. They dissect me. They split me open.

The reason he had been standing away from her, downwind, was because he was always cognizant of not blowing smoke into her eyes. She would have married him for that reason alone. Because he was the type of person who was considerate enough to stand downwind, but still needed human connection the same as her, and so wouldn’t take his eyes off her even for a second.

She had been deeply loved. She was Clarence the angel from It’s a Wonderful Life, telling George Bailey – “See, George? You really had a wonderful life.” Like her, Clarence had no wings. Until the end of the film, anyway.

8

No, no, come on, she thought. This cannot be how it ends. She needed more time, a lot more time, now that everything made sense. It was the long-sought after meaning of life, not a two-digit number or the pursuit of happiness, but an equation of things entirely encompassed within her mind. It was being loved that was worth it. But it was also more than that – it was as if she knew the answers to everything, but just didn’t have enough time to figure it out, even though the process had been sent into overdrive during the fall.

9

She remembered her mother’s words a second time. She didn’t know how much time she had left, but she didn’t want to spend it scared. It was a reality: she was going to die. Now she had to move on from that fact, and focus on something more important. More important than her life. Her silly little life, about to end. How narcissistic it is. But what choice do humans have? They have to be – they have no choice. In order to step into someone else’s shoes, they had to bypass some of the most fundamental evolutionary programming – the need to provide for self.

But she wanted to find the answer to something beyond herself, larger than herself, than her little life and its little trials and tribulations. She needed, at last, to let go of her ego in these last moments and come to some sense of resolution, some revelation, some realization. Like those Buddhist monks who spend their entire lives meditating, at last being able to set themselves on fire and burn to a crisp without twitching. There must be something –  

10

She hit the ground.