Jump

She felt like her heart had been ripped out.

Whatever was left of it, anyway, it was never whole to begin with. She felt empty, estranged, lonely. Alone. Yeah, that was the most painful one of all. Being alone. She was always so terrified of it and now her worst nightmare had come true, there was literally no one around her. No one to talk to, no one to make her feel better. No one to comfort her.

She knew she was the one who drove them all away. She knew that if she gave any of her so-called “friends” a call now they’d act as though nothing happened… they’d act like everything was just alright. But she couldn’t do it, because she’d always know. Always know that she was the one who made that extra move and that no one else bothered to.

A tear swam out of her tired eyes and fell like a rock upon her chest. Her tears were heavy and painful, each one cut her skin wherever it landed. She looked around her and felt like everything was going in slow motion. The sun was shining against her skin, burning her into a sense of fatigue. She liked it. She wanted to feel that helpless. For once, she wanted to feel out of control. For once, she wanted to feel out of it, she wanted to feel like she didn’t have a choice to make on what was about to happen to her. She was so tired of choosing, so tired of resisting.

She watched the cars below her, whooshing by so busily and carelessly. She tried to remember the last time she felt like that. For the past year it seemed like she was jumping from one worry to the next. One loss after the other. One dream shattering before the next.

She’d lost the love of her life to something so mundane yet she couldn’t fight it and it tore her heart in two. She’d lost her closest friends to distance, lust, pride and irrational fears. She lost her faith because she couldn’t believe that a divine power would bear to watch her suffer like she was. She lost her family because families tend to make too small a deal out of depression… and her inability to explain why she was fading caused them to undermine her pain. And in the end she lost her sanity… and it was the hardest thing for her to lose.

She looked down one more time. She was always so afraid of heights and that made her particularly proud of herself at that moment. There she stood on the edge and not a single cell of her body felt any sense of fear. Sadness, only sadness. That was the only emotion her body had allowed her to feel for some time now.

She waited for the ant-sized people to clear the way below her and then for the first time in her life, she craved a loss. And with one step forward, she achieved it.

© Copyright 7ala Abdullah