Five Stages of Exit

Prologue

As the cold breeze of the night brushed against my face, I knew that this night would be different. Sitting on the ledge of a balcony 12 floors above the ground, my feet propped on a chair, I keep gazing up, talking to the sky and pleading for a wishing star, for a sign. Any sign that He can hear me.

I looked down on the cars below as they passed by on the cold, silent street. I watched strangers as they walk on different directions under the flickering streetlamp oblivious to the world around them or to the girl above them having these evil thoughts right now.

A lot of things are circling my mind this very minute, my heart is as heavy as my eyelids, and my head is still throbbing despite the fact that I already took two aspirins. That was a lie. Six aspirins.

They said suicide is cowardly.
Well, fuck that.
Do they know how much strength it takes to look at the pavement below you as if looking at death straight in the eyes while saying "Sorry dickface, you don't own me", then tilt your body ever so slightly to let gravity do its work and pull you down, as if you're letting go of your physical body, that cage you can't escape, binding you to pain, rejections, disappointments? Only to pull back up again to safety, as if taunting the cosmos, and the cycle restarts, making you feel freer more than ever, that you are have the remote control in your hand. It feels like riding the highest roller coaster on earth, waiting for the fall. You go up, and up, and up, always waiting for the fall.

My name is Jane. If I went missing, just ask around for a girl with big owl eyes and you'll find me. You might think I look like a doll, but really, I'm more like a wet puppy left out in the rain for too long. These golden eyes are from my mother and the rest from the man who disappeared from the picture when I was five.

My father worked six months straight in a year -- twice. He and mom separated when I was a kid and since then, I never talked to him. Well, actually he never talked to us, but I like the idea that I hated him first better.
So to make up for lost family time with us, he built himself a new family to experience it.

My mother is a manager of a small garment factory which she works at strictly 5 days a week. You have to give it to her, for a single working mother, she still has time to make puppet socks for my sister.

Yes, I have a little sister of 7, and this sister of mine, is my father's daughter, so yes my father was out of the picture for years and yet managed to impregnate my mother. Do the math.

It used to be fantastic.
All of that's changed now.