On Not Jumping

By

For a minute, I almost believe that this time I am going to have the courage to do it.

Tom Petty flows through my ear buds, keeping me calm.

I’m so close that the toes of my size 5 pink converses are hanging over the edge of the concrete, dangling dangerously and waiting for the rest of my body to follow suit. Since I can’t look out and I can’t look around, I just look at my shoes. I think about how they are two sizes too small because I’ve had them forever and I’ll never throw them out.

Nobody really appreciates Converse anymore, and how it takes at least a year to get them truly scuffed and dirty, not the kind where you go rub new shoes in dirt on purpose, but the kind of dirt that only years of trekking through life can bring. They are the perfect shoes for the occasion.

A size 7 shoe, which I am now, is the average shoe size of American women. That’s why they sell out the fastest, and you can never find that size in the clearance aisle.

Average shoe size, average weight, average looking. I’m completely average, and average usually tends to mean forgettable.

I feel bad for shoes that are in the clearance aisle. I want to buy all of them and go home and put them in my closet just so that they won’t feel like they are unloved. So that they won’t just get thrown away.

Back to the present — isn’t that what I’m doing now?

I’m throwing away my life. Trying to at least.

A new song clicks on my iPod and I’m ready to look. I’m ready to jump.

It hits me that I’ve been standing on the edge of this building for a while now, and I haven’t done a thing.

Still, no one has noticed me standing up here. I don’t know what I was expecting really.

A crowd, I guess. And news vans. Maybe a reporter standing next to me on the ledge, shoving a mic in my face and asking me if I had any last words. I wonder if the crowd would look away quickly at the end, or just watch as the concrete rose up to hit my body? But I’m pretty sure that no one will notice, and no one will care. Not unless a part of me sprays onto their new shoes.

One day I walked into Barnes & Noble and bought the book “Don’t Jump!” just for hell of it. I waited in the 20-minute line and when it was my turn at the counter I plopped it down next to the register triumphantly.

I didn’t know how I was expecting her to react, but I wanted to see her reaction.

She scanned the book and told me my total without even looking at me. Without even blinking.

“Are there any other books like this one?” I asked her.

Her voice was monotone and she still hadn’t looked up from inspecting her nails. “You could try the self-help section, maybe.”

“Forget it,” I said, before shoving a crumpled bill onto the counter and walking away.

Was it a long slow process that turned me jaded? I don’t know. I just woke up like that one morning. The sun was shining and it didn’t seem to make a damn bit of difference.

When I beat a man to a taxi later that day he told me to “go to hell.” I looked at him confused, and said “I thought I was already there.”

It’s a tough choice to decide how you want to end your own life, you’d be surprised. It’s something that most people don’t realize until they get serious about planning it out.

There are guns, pills, a long walk and a short fall, endless possibilities when you consider them all. But each one seems imperfect.

There’s always the question of if it will work, or someone will come along like an asshole and try to save your life.

The more foolproof plans seem to leave some kind of a mess behind. I always think about who would have to clean it up.

I think I heard somewhere that women are more likely to take pills when committing suicide, because they are worried that a loved one will have to clean up the mess. Men are more likely to use a gun.

I think it would be weird; the last taste you will ever taste is the metallic coldness of a gun in your mouth.

It must have taken me months to decide to jump. Then there was the question of when and where. But I decided, obviously. Because here I am.

But even before climbing up here to the top of this building, I knew I wasn’t going to jump. Do I want to? Sure. Will I? I don’t have the guts.

I’ll walk back down all those stairs, go home, and add this to the list of things that I’m not brave enough to do.

– Eat in a restaurant alone.

– Make the first move.

– Off myself.

Isn’t it funny how as soon as the lights are off and I’m alone, my insecurities all come crashing down around me?

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image – espos.de