Prologue
This story starts on a bad day. It was not a generally bad day; there were no big disasters, no war started, the Queen did not die and neither did Oprah. It was not world-crushing. It was just, well, crushing me. I was crushing myself. No one was suffering and no one was hurting, except for myself. That was what it felt like. I was hurting and everyone else wasn't. And that was what made it so painful.
I used to be so happy when I was a teenager. My grades were okay and I had the best friends a boy could wish for. I even was lucky when it came to love. The girls were all crazy about me, if you can call it that, and even though I soon realized I was entirely and irreversible gay, no one gave me hell. I don't even know! You hear that so often; stories about that one kid in school that's gay and keeps getting bullied and called a fag and gets really depressed and so on. I'm sure stuff like that happens all the time. I mean, I know it happens all the time. But it never happened to me. I don't know why but I kind of used to wish it had happened to me then because it would have given me a reason and made the troubles I had later on seem less bad. Or maybe not. I'm probably stupid for thinking that way. But that's just how I used to feel…
Anyway, what I'm trying to get to is this: My life was great. I was happy and my laughter used to draw people in and capture them.
It's hard to pinpoint the exact moment that had set off all the later events. However, I guess it started when they moved away after high school ended. 'They' were my two best friends, Francis and Gilbert. They were the two people I told everything and trusted. Them leaving was something I absolutely underestimated at the time. We settled on skyping a lot and it started off great. But, you see, this is just not how it works. At first you skype every week, then every month, then just a few times a year… And after a while you kind of just stop. I used to think they had found jobs or had gotten themselves girlfriends. But deep within myself there was a mean little voice telling me they had forgotten about me.
Antonio, they don't need you anymore. They replaced you with someone better, someone less annoying, someone more intelligent. They forgot about you.
Not knowing for sure almost drove me crazy. But it was hard, because the people I would normally have talked to about this were the reason I was feeling bad and they were gone. So I started to try and think about other things.
I met someone one night when I was at a club, and we met again the next day at a café. Then another time near the river and another time we went to the movies together. You see where this is going; he liked me and I liked him, so we became boyfriends. He became my new person to tell everything and my new person to trust. I guess I became a little too dependent on him…
When I was in the beginning of my twenties I was doing great. I had a job and I was positive I would keep it. My boss was this really lovable old man, who always asked everyone how they were doing and talked to us about our problems. He was always very concerned about the well-being of his employees. Sometimes he would invite the whole office to an ice cream in town! During my years there I grew really fond of him and, I don't know, he just reminded me so much of my dead grandpa back in Spain, where I was born. I felt very comfortable at work and I cherished it because I knew it was not something everyone could say about their job.
One evening I came home from work to the little flat my boyfriend and I lived in and found him in the candle-lit kitchen. He had made us dinner, which was really special because normally I would cook. We ate and then he proposed to me. And I said yes. I was overwhelmed by emotions. You see, it was perfect. It was what little girls dreamt of and to be honest, it was what I dreamt of, too.
A few months later we got married, wearing slick black suits, white shirts and red bow ties. I was the happiest guy on earth. I felt like I was back in high school. The only thing dimming my mood was that the two most important people, the only people I really cared about knowing how happy I was, were missing.
In case you're wondering, I'm not talking about my parents here. They moved back to Spain quite some time ago, and we were never really that close. I spent so much time away from home anyway. Because I used to have friends and that's the thing. My friends were not there and it was probably my fault.
I was felicitously married for three years. Then I came home from work soaked in water from the rain outside one day to find him in our bedroom with two girls he had picked up in some club. I kicked them out. When I asked how long this had been going on, if it was the first time, he just shrugged nonchalantly and said, "Well, Toni, can't spent my whole life just fucking you, hm?"
Miraculously, I did not explode then. I told him to get away that instant, that I didn't want to ever see him again and that he shouldn't bother getting his things. I was going to take care of that. He left, grinning like it was all just some kind of cruel joke I didn't get. His smile only faded when he was standing on the street and I was throwing all his shit out of the window of our third story flat. His clothes, his toothbrush, his shoes, the bed sheets he had fucked those girls on, all his pictures, his TV… I was thorough.
It took me a while to get going after that. Because I was alone again, my friends were somewhere I couldn't reach them, there was no one I trusted and no one who loved me, I soon thought. I didn't have the energy to move, or go places. I spent so much time just lying on my sofa in silence before I realized he had picked it and decided I had to burn it.
My only surviving save anchor was work.
I started to really look forward to it and felt dread about going home in the evening. There was no one waiting for me there, I was all alone, betrayed by everyone I loved. I would still often just sit in the dark for hours, not saying anything, just thinking. And all of my thoughts would start to turn in circles, always repeating one thing.
You can't do nothing right, can you? Why would anyone honestly care about you? You're not worth the effort. You've never been.
And the longer I sat there alone, the easier it would get to believe what that nasty little voice told me.
But at least I had work, then. I had that one safe place.
However, about two months after the breakup I came to work just to be told to go back home right after stepping into the office. My boss had been fatally hit by a car. He'd died that night, after having been brought to the hospital by the ambulance.
My colleagues were disturbed. Of course, he had been an amazing human being. He had been kind and helpful and would never have judged anyone based on prejudices. It was normal to mourn his loss. But I was not just mourning, I think. I was being torn apart by it.
I was not fired, but I just couldn't bring myself to go back to work from then on. I was scared of being confronted by the so familiar place when it was missing the person that had made it so familiar in the first place. I locked myself away again, only leaving my flat to buy some food occasionally. I felt drained, like my body was tired of always loosing, tired of being alone, tired of waking up every single day. It was then that the voice in my head started to get worse.
Look at yourself. How pathetic. This is your life and you're willingly letting it go to waste. This is why everyone you meet is so disgusted of you. They left. They don't want you around. They're glad they don't have to deal with you anymore.
I would often find myself curled up on the new couch, clutching my knees to my chest and feeling the puffiness of my eyes and moisture of long gone tears on my cheeks.
Weeks passed like that and I didn't even look. In my pathetic condition I felt timeless. I realized that the world was happy to keep on turning, even though I was not participating in life anymore. The outside world wasn't even missing me. They were probably glad I was gone, too. Just like the people I thought had been my friends, and the man I thought had loved me.
They were all liars and I was a liar, for I had been betraying myself my whole life long. I was not happy, I was sad. There was no happy end, there was just despair waiting for me. Life was not fun, it was hell. And I didn't want to live anymore.
On the evening I finally had that realization my doorbell rung for the first time in what felt like ages. I slowly got up and opened, just to find my landlord, telling me my rent had been due for too long a time. He had also heard that I was unemployed now, and said he just couldn't afford renting a flat to someone who did not earn any money to pay for it. Basically, he wanted me out of the flat by the end of the week.
Maybe he was not actually legally allowed to just kick me out of there in such a short time. The thing is: I did not care.
All I could think was that it would not take me that long to be out of my flat. And not just out of my flat, not out of this city, not out of this country. I was going to be out of the world and forgotten just a few hours from then on.
And that is basically how I came to be standing on the highest bridge I could find in this city.
Surprised, I realize my hands are shaking. Weird. After all, I have made my decision and I am not going to draw back from it now. It would make me even more pathetic than I already am.
So I lift my hands to rest them on the cold metal railing separating me from the depths under the bridge and grip it tightly. I can't see them shaking anymore now and I feel my heartbeat slowing to a shockingly steady rhythm.
It's not like I'm not scared of what will happen to me after I… after I kill myself. I should probably see it as a kind of salvation. It cannot be any worse than my life is right now.
I slowly bow my head down over the railing and look down at the black stream of water about twenty meters beneath me and wonder if it's high enough. But there is not higher bridge there, and I'm not going to let myself crash onto the pavement from the top of some building. I don't want anyone to be traumatized because some idiot decided to fall right before their feet to kill himself. Everyone else can keep on living their lives as usual. I just don't want to be part of it anymore.
My thoughts circling, I take a hesitant step back. I try to calm my breath because it's going fast again.
Suddenly, I find myself thinking I am being stupid and childish. It might be my fault I lost contact to my friends. If I go home now I can try harder to get back in contact with them. Maybe they miss me. Maybe they are thinking of me too, sometimes, and wondering what I am doing these days.
But I shake my head to get rid of those ideas. I am lying to myself again.
No regrets, I tell myself.
And I step back forward and determinedly set one foot at the bottom of the railing to swing the other above it so I can stand on the other side of it.
I visibly flinch when all of the sudden I hear a voice.
I freeze in shock when I turn my head and see a person stand about one meter away from me. He has his hands in the pockets of his jacket and is staring at my face, his expression unreadable and his gaze intense. He holds my gaze and I find myself unable to move.
After a few seconds he repeats what he said before:
"Are you gonna jump?"