A rat scurries from the sewer as I watch a paper bag blow by my face, caught up by the wind in a rustling dance. My rags sit heavy on me, like the weight of a thousand broken dreams, their terrible gravity bearing down on my fragile back. I can no longer hold this weight.
I used to be a dreamer. Columbia, days of smoked-up rooms, philosophy, talking of how we would all be the next generation of philosopher-kings, as Plato once dreamed. Ruling justly, watching over everything and everybody with eyes blessed with wisdom and a fist so shining, so radiant that one could hardly call it iron. Once we got out of school, dreams could no longer hold that weight.
Three years ago, after yet another PowerPoint presentation on yet another meaningless company policy, I went back to my desk and cried. I took my hands balled them up into little fists, balls of frustration and rage, and I slammed them against the wooden surface. I slammed them again and again, crushing all of the nos, all of the you can’ts, all of the haters and doubters and obstacles and all of their little worlds. The desk collapsed, unable to hold the weight of my anger.
I used to throw myself at the glass windows at the top of the ChryslerBuilding. The safety glass would always hold, mans ingenuity once again saving me from my own self-destructive tendencies. As I got older, I did that less and less, mistrusting the world around me as it abused me and my glorious, ethereal dreams. The last time I looked at that window, I imagined myself plunging, falling down an endless abyss, and chills ran down my back. Nightmares can still hold their weight.
I tried to do it a couple years ago in my mothers’ basement. There was a pipe, and I had purchased a length of smooth rope from a convenience store. I looped it around the pipe, sent the white, frayed rabbit scurrying around the tree, as he frantically mutters “I’m late, I’m late”, before plunging down a hole, not to Wonderland, but to the empty black nothingness that waits beyond. I stood on a chair, looped the rope around my neck, and kicked backwards, letting myself fall. But that rope wouldn’t hold my weight.
This city crushed me. All of the buildings and cars and people and streets and trees and noise and little straight lines. The little straight lines everywhere, everything is straight, even the things that pretend to be curved just straight and straight and straight so tiny you can’t see it. All the cars going forward in their neat little lines. I wish someone could tell them the truth, that nothing in this life is straightforward. I tried, but I couldn’t hold the city’s weight.
I’ve decided to throw myself at the glass today. Maybe it’ll hold me. Maybe it’ll throw me back into this cruel world, force me to look at myself and say “Get up.” Maybe it will force me to stand on my own two feet and perhaps this time I will succeed in getting my balance. Maybe it’ll pop out of its frame. I close my eyes and what I see is me and a pane of safety glass, my eyes wild, my body spinning, my hand reaching up as I scream regret, the safety glass falling silent, like a rock, unaware of its impending demise. Maybe the ground can hold my weight. Maybe I can hold my own. I throw myself at the window, and let the glass decide.
