Bravery

Starting Over

    Pain. That was all I could think of at the moment. My feet were bleeding, painting the lonely, pale yellow grains scattered beneath them red, courtesy 
Of the jagged rocks all over.

   My legs are starting to feel numb. I've been sitting on top of that cliff for a while now. I'm not sure how long, but long enough for the sun to start rising.

    Dawn, new beginnings and optimistic useless stuff, are usually associated with the beautiful colours of the sun rising, right? Well, at least not to me, anyway.

    Actually, it was the dawn that inspired me to come here today and take this decision, a decision that has been taunting me for a while now. Should I do it? Should I jump? Should I, finally, kill myself?

    Sunrises have always shown that new beginnings are always better, always great, and that always confused me; if so, then why is my life shitty even when keep I starting over and over again? Is the universe, too, lying to me?

    Then I realized something, I'm doing it wrong. If I really want to start over, I have to have a clean slate, right? So that's what I'm doing wrong.

    Even though I know what is wrong, I always find myself unable to fix it, after all, I am a coward, right? But I'm not. I know that deep down, I'm not a coward, I stand up, and I'll prove everyone who ever called me a coward wrong.

    I'm already standing at the edge of the cliff, barefoot. There was that small, nearly non-existent voice in the back of my mind, telling me that I'm being stupid, but I brush it off. I don't care, not anymore.

    The sound of the waves crashing into the cliff is loud, the waves are gentle, its sound nearly a lullaby to my ears, even though I've always feared the water, watching it has always provided me with a strange tranquillity that only it can provide me in some sort of a sick twisted way. The waves aren't that rough, the wind is blowing gently, and the gentle first rays of sunlight are starting to peek through.

    I'm not a coward, I start to inch forward, slowly, but surely. I'm standing barefoot, my feet are now halfway off the cliff. My toes are tingling from the cold and hurt from the rough edge of the cliff, I can feel blood seeping through the small cuts and the grainy feeling of dirt underneath my feet. I can feel the blood rushing in my ears from the adrenaline, the sound of the waves is louder than ever.

    A coward? I think not, I feel my face getting hot, I feel my heart starting to beat even faster, but not from excitement, anger, or frustration, like all the feelings that have been dwelling inside me all night, because the numbness is coming back with a vengeance.

I read once that it takes about thirty to sixty seconds for a person to stop struggling, and after that it takes only a couple of minutes or a little more till your death. Easy, right?

And before I know it, I feel the wind rushing against me, the air colder than my already freezing skin. It feels like I am weightless for a moment, but only a moment.

     Splash

    It's cold. That's all I can think. I can feel the water rushing into my ears, seeping through my woollen jumper, wetting my once dry skin. I can feel the gentle waves pulling and pushing me. I open my eyes, the salty water burns them, but I still force them open. My surroundings, a beautiful bluish-green, with the early sunlight filtering through, have always terrified me. Even if it was my first time seeing it, I've always been terrified of it.

    The muffled sound of the water from the bubbles and my muscles flailing around makes me feel claustrophobic, and for a moment, everything goes still, and I realize that I did it; I jumped.