"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."
-Norman Cousins
Thin fingers clutched to the balcony railing as the world spun hideously in and out of focus. High above, a woman stood gazing down, knees wobbling and fawn-like. Lights below smeared against the endless black and the city's bustle a howling in her skull.
Her mind had become no more than a series of disjointed images and fractured connections, drifting around like the blizzard in a snow globe.
The alcohol had done its work.
She recalled her sin…what she'd done and hadn't. There was no forgiveness to be found, no lesson to learn, no way to fix what had happened, nothing.
A wind tore past and bit ferociously at bare skin. The woman shivered as she was clad in only under garments and ashes. A pale blue button-up shirt, much too large for her bony frame, hung about her shoulders and twirled in the breeze.
She thought again of the snow globe, thought of it falling away. Would it shatter or will it be swallowed…
She was presenting herself with a binary decision, a yes or no, do or do not. She would ultimately decide.
She was still in control.
That was what she would tell herself.
She prayed for a tiny mercy, and then climbed atop the ornate, metal railing.
The thoughts circled her, like pack of hounds or sharks of the deep. Her thoughts, her actions, always repeating, over and over becoming the skip on vinyl. Every cycle, a new flaw could be found, how stupid she had been.
Useless. Useless. Useless!
She'd been so close.
Here, now, there could be a solution. She could finally succeed at something…
The earth beneath her, the hard, solid concrete; it seemed so far…
She swallowed, then rose her arms like fragile wings.
Then the woman looked out on the horizon. Just empty, black abyss. Her sun was gone.
And it really was true, everyone dies alone…
She clenched her eyes shut and stepped off the edge.