She wanted to die.
He wanted to live.
•••
A hand grabbed onto my wrist, yanking me back just as the train rushed past, before I'd even had time to comprehend whether or not I'd carry out the action. I stumbled back into the person's chest, my hear...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Falling was a concept I was vehemently afraid of but had never actually experienced – at least, physically.
I'd just assumed that since heights felt so freeing and were the closest I could ever get to happiness, the notion of falling had to be an equally opposite feeling of perturbation and a complete loss of control. Everything good had a bad side to it, and to me something as divine as seeing the stars or morning sunrise had to inevitably come with something as dark and dangerous as falling.
I suppose I liked to walk the fine line between living and dying, not explicitly trying to kill myself but putting myself in positions that might result in an accidental death. It was a wonder that I was still alive with the amount of high-rise buildings I've scaled my way to the top of, and the amount of nights I've wandered aimlessly around the unsafe city.
But just because I hadn't been actively suicidal didn't mean I wasn't still killing myself. In hindsight, one could say I had been committing prolonged suicide, dancing with death each time I left my house with no intention of ending up anywhere specific. I hadn't been planning for my death but I hadn't been avoiding it either, subconsciously falling in love with things that made me feel alive, but things that also had the capacity to kill me.
Maybe that's why I craved heights so much – maybe it wasn't the freeing feeling as the wind whipped past me or watching the stars glow from galaxies afar, but rather because they had the ability to kill me. One slip as I climbed up a ladder and I could fall to my death; one misplaced step or rusted railing and I could face my biggest fear and fall for an eternity.
I relied on accidents that never seemed to happen because until tonight I'd never had the strength to take the chances out of fate's hands and purposely end my own life. Perhaps, that's why I decided to toy with fate and choose the most ironic way to die – a combination of something that I loved, and something I hated. Trains had become a long-awaited solace at the end of each day, which when combined with my immense fear of falling was an oxymoronic way to protest at fate's inability to do what I'd been patiently waiting for.
But even then, as I'd stood past the haunting yellow line with the oncoming train imminently passing, I wasn't completely sure if I was ready to let myself fall. I wasn't completely sure if I really wanted to tip my body over and fall the give-or-take metre drop before my body was crushed to become a gory spread of blood and bones. I wasn't completely sure if I wanted to die knowing that I had only experienced the negative side of falling.
Because now, I was falling down headfirst, watching the foundations of my years' worth of walls crumble around me as I dropped down amongst the destroyed debris – but it was the complete opposite of what I'd expected the physical sensation to be. Falling emotionally, into a well of feelings I'd never thought I would get the privilege to experience, made me grateful that I'd never gotten to take those final steps before Romeo had pulled me away from the edge.
