Maybe I Can Fly [Completed]

Part Three

"You saw nothing," she muttered, her tone rough and definitive.

"I definitely saw something, alright. How fresh are those scars?"

Her eyes started to tear up as she spoke, her hard shell starting to crack. But she still tried to hold onto her last ounce of defiance, her words sharp like broken glass and just as shattered.

"An- an hour. Maybe two. I don't know what fucking time it is." But her voice cracked on the last word.

She then turned to me, seeing me for who I really was for the first time, a broken person, just like her. Her hands shook when she spoke, the vermilion of her cigarette moving in the dark night.

"They don't get it. They really don't, do they? I'll try to ask for help, and all they'll say is 'be happy', 'don't be so negative', 'you won't feel like this forever', 'everything will be ok if you just wait it out'. They don't get that sometimes it's really not that easy. They don't understand, and by God I never want them to."

Her voice faltered again before she recovered.

"They don't get how much it hurts, how fucked up you have to be to slide a blade across your wrists and feel elated when you see that little river of red run down your skin. They don't understand the voices in your head, the ones that whisper things that kill you inside. They don't understand the sweet siren song that death sings in your ear, and how hard it is not to listen. Because sometimes, you feel so much that you want to do something that will make you not feel at all. Because feeling hurts. And the sweet nothings that oblivion whispers to you in the dead of night, when it's three in the morning, and the only thing that you have are your bathroom walls, sound pretty good right then. In between the sea of tears and the chill of being alone, when Death offers you a way out, it sounds so easy right then. It sounds right. And they don't get how hard it is to fight that when every fiber of your being, every force in the universe, every single thing that you're trying to fight against wants you to give up."

I looked at her, a few tears slowly creeping down her face. Her eyes showed how broken she was inside, how deep her sorrow ran. But the saddest part is, I knew what that looked like because it was familiar. It was the same look that I gave the mirror every day, the same look that made me wanna shatter my own reflection. I moved closer to her, taking her smaller hand in my own.

"I do. I know just how fucked up life can get, and just how tempting death really is, and just how hard life pushes you down. I swear I do."

"Oh yeah? What's your sob story then?"

I removed my hand from hers, steadying myself on the ledge. I was still a little tipsy.

"I asked you first." When she remained silent, however, I took the hint that I had to open up before she would. She was still weary of trusting me, even after her outburst; I could see it on her face so I started.

"Hell began a year ago. One day, a normal day, y'know, I never woulda guessed it. But I guess we never really guess it, now do we? The days that change our lives. I mean, who can know these things, who can know that they're gonna get shot on the street or that they're gonna get in a plane crash, you now? Who knows when things end their lives, or maybe just end the lives that they knew?

"Anyway, one day I come home and my dad's, like, bawling his eyes out. Now, I never see my dad cry, never. The man's heart's, like, hard as steel or something. So when I see his eyes bloodshot, I know something happened. And then he chokes it out, and you know how in the movies when people get life-shattering news the character like freezes up and their eyes get all wide and their blood runs cold, their heart droppin' about forty feet? They start to lose their balance and the only word they're able to fuckin' get outta their goddamn pitiful mouth is no? A million times, over and over and over again until it's like that's the only word they can say? It's imprinted on their tongue and carved into their throat and branded on the walls of their mouth, their brain erased completely except for that one fucking word? Yeah, that was me when my dad told me my mom died. Fucking car accident."

She visibly swallowed, looking down, presumably to hide the mist forming in her eyes. But I was used to telling people what happened, since everyone wanted a fucking story. Once you say something enough times, to friends and to family and to people who you don't even know, who you don't even think really care, you become immune to it. It doesn't sting as much as it used to; it welcomes a numbness that's kind of disturbing, when you think about it. Because everyone wants to know what happened; everyone wants a piece of your pain, as if their own wasn't enough. Let the woman rest in peace, remember her in life, not in death. If someone wanted me to talk about my mother, I'd rather talk about her breathing and smiling than think of her cold and lifeless.

I continued.

"And then everything went downhill from there. My dad stopped talking to me, y'know, distracted himself. Buried himself in his work, as if it could bring mom back, as if it could make him forget what happened in the first place. So really, I lost both of them that day. And then the depression kicked in, the self-loathing, the lack of will to get up in the morning, the sudden suffocating sadness. I started skipping class, lying in bed all day. I swear I can draw a detailed diagram of my bedroom ceiling, well, if I could draw that is.

"So because of that my grades went down, and I got in trouble with truancy, and I started not giving a fuck about school, or my future in general, honestly. I was alone, with nothing to even live for. Why should I try, I could just die tomorrow anyway in some freak accident. It can happen to anyone, at any time. So why live just to become a corpse tomorrow? Then, I found the beauties of alcohol, which have probably ruined my liver by now. That also got me into some trouble at school; I won't get into that, though. And you wanna know the real kicker? Today my bitch of a counselor told me if I don't clean up my act, I'm gonna fail the entire motherfucking year! Or worse, probably some shit like military school. How great is that!"

By the end of my speech, sarcasm was dripping from every letter in my words. I was tired, and I was hurt, and I was pissed. And that was never a good combination. I looked over at Faith, trying to gauge her reaction. But I couldn't see her face. Her cigarette was long finished, and her head was pointed towards the street below. The only sound was the distant traffic and the soft hum of the motors of the heating units a few yards away. She didn't speak. And frankly, I was done talking. It was silent for a few minutes, an uncomfortable, heavy silence, the ones that you don't like and make your skin kinda crawl with anticipation. But then, she started to speak, her voice low and gentle, like if she talked louder, the world around us would shatter.

"You know, my grandpa died when I was younger. I know it's not the same, I know you're hurting so much more than I was, but let me tell you something my father told me. He said that my grandfather wasn't really gone. He said that every time it rained, I could feel my grandfather's, I don't know, presence in the rainfall. He said that the ones we've lost come back in the droplets, and that if ever missed grandpa, I could go out and play in the rain. It would be like he was there again, right with me."

And right then is when I felt tears at the corners of my eyes. My chest constricted, making my breath catch in my throat. I closed my gateway to the rest of the world, letting the darkness consume me, protect me. And then I felt it all over again. I felt like I was falling, like the ground was giving out under me, like my world was collapsing. I felt the water collect in my eyes, glassing them over like ice does a pond in the winter almost. And then I felt that one tear hit my cheek, no matter how much I tried to hold it in. Because men don't cry, right? Because I can't show emotion. Because it makes me weak. Because boys have to be strong.

But you know what? Sometimes, we break, too.

So I lost it. The tears started to rush down my face hot, fast, and out of my control. I sat there, practically hyperventilating, watching as my tears dropped down towards the busy streets, filled with people, even though it was the middle of the night. It was funny, how the world worked. The people under us would never know what was happening above. They would never know that we were there unless we made them notice. Because that was the thing about our planet, the beautifully tragic thing. Anything could happen at any moment. There is no concept of boundaries. One person could be relishing death while another could be cherishing a new life, one could be finding love while another could be losing it. One man could be miserable while the other was having the time of his life. The disconnection that we experience was baffling to my hurt, drunk mind in which my problems seemed to be the most important thing in the world.

I sniffed one last time before drying my tears, finally gaining composure. I looked at Faith, my eyes probably bloodshot and my face probably pale. "Ok, your turn."