Beyond Repair

By: zhakeena

***

Here I am, sitting at the edge of the building, a pair of earphones plugged at my ears, a black jacket wrapped around me, its hood over my head, a packet of cigarettes hidden in the pocket of the same jacket. I look over the city, the cars seemingly the size of beetles moving infinitely in the labyrinth, smaller people moving endlessly here and there, everywhere… an automatic machine of oppression, it seems.

The building I sit on is 23 stories high. Below me, people of all shapes and sizes live their hopefully normal lives in those 23 floors.

I want to reach for a cigarette, an orange-flavored one. (I always buy the expensive kind, Peel, because I don’t usually smoke anyway…. My parents will die of shame if they find out.) I want to inhale noxious yet addictive fumes to make me feel better, but I smell rain from a distance. I decide against it. I’ve only brought a jacket, and not an umbrella. My cigarettes will get soaked soon.

I try hard not to concentrate on the building, on the way the city looks, on the way my feet are stepping on nothing, on how high up I truly am. I instead turn my attention to the rock music blaring at my ears.

But the screeching guitars and the profound but angered lyrics do nothing to distract me from the fact that I’m at that place. “What am I doing here?” I ask myself again.

The suicide note beside me sits harmlessly under the CD player.

I remember once more, and try to forget again: I wanted to jump. I wanted to die.

Why?

It’s not that I don’t have anything else to do. It’s not that I don’t feel loved. Well, maybe it’s the fact that I feel so loved. The world loves me, but I can’t love it back.

That doesn’t make sense at all, does it…? It’s a way of saying, “I don’t know why I want to kill myself. But I know I want to kill myself.”

I want to jump. Some people would say that it’s an old, cliché way of suicide… but I’m not morbid enough to use knives. I’m not brave enough to use guns. I’m not honorable enough to use poisons…

And, that I want to fly before I die.

The rain starts to fall. I get soaked eventually. As I’ve predicted… the cigarettes get soggy.

I don’t stop listening to Incubus’ A Crow Left of the Murder album. I don’t want to.

I don’t want to jump yet…

I want somebody to come up here and say, “You stupid girl! What are you doing here getting yourself soaked in the rain? Are you killing yourself?” I want somebody to stop me and convince me that what I’m doing is wrong.

But… nobody comes up. I sit for 3 hours there in the rain. Nobody comes up.

Not mother, not father, not my Kuya Jed or Ate Pia… not one of my friends, enemies, profs, crushes, exes, acquaintances seen here and there from school… not one of those faceless neighbors, not the security guard, not the owner of the building. Not a stranger who has any interest in saving me or anything. Nobody.

I still wait. I have faith that my Kuya Jed will come for me… it’s his CD player that’s getting soaked in the rain.

But he doesn’t.

I take this as a sign. I can jump now… can’t I?

I have this freedom in my grasp. A freedom I’m afraid to take.

I stand up at the edge of the building, overlooking the same city, the same machine. For a moment… it felt like the edge of infinity.

Is this the part where I unplug the earphones from my ear? Where I leave the soggy note and hope it’s still readable? Where I try to clear my vision amidst the rain?

I hope it is. I look back once more. I hope somebody’s come for me at this point.

Nobody. I’m alone.

I see the sky, the rain clouds, the city, the CD player, the letter, the lights, the people, the umbrellas, the car I’m going to land on… everything.

I breathe. And I jump.

Then, there was a split second I hope doesn’t happen; a split second I hope I just dream up. The split second, just when my feet lose its contact with the concrete of the edge of the building… I think I see someone open the door from the inside.

Somebody comes for me… a split-second too late.

“JENG!”

The wind burns my face.

I sense the people look up at me… and gasp.

They’re too late.

I land on a car. I don’t know what kind of car it is, just that it’s black. And now tainted red with my blood. Broken glass is everywhere.

Help arrives too late.

People who do not know my name cry. Medics conclude that my body is beyond help. The people, tears in their eyes, must have realized that more than my body, my soul is beyond repair.

Like a ghost, I stand in the crowd, unseen. I watch with mild amusement the way they carry my body and lay it as respectfully as possible on a stretcher.

Like a ghost, I watch my brother sobbing, telling the police what he’s seen of me… in that split second. For the first time, I see my brother cry. It’s strange. I feel a slight tinge at my chest… but I fail to cry. My soul is beyond repair.

Is this the world that loves me? The one I can’t love enough?

I never wanted to leave this world. But then… it’s too late, isn’t it? I never wanted to leave this world. It is special to me.

I guess I’ll have to leave…