Happiness

Brandon Taylor
Contributor
I’ve seen her die so many times by now.
It’s always the same; I’m lying on my bed on the 14th floor of my complex and I look out my window into the cold distance. Boston apartments stand against the horizon like ancient titans delivered into the modern world. Their windows glimmer with gentle, haunting wisps of light, and then always my eyes are drawn towards the roof of the closest building. I know she will come.
And every single time she does, roaming out from the rooftop door in a beautiful thin white dress and then simply standing there like a wingless angel. Then she looks around at the city, maybe thinking over things, maybe not. Maybe her mind is closed by this point. She is close enough that I can see the tears shimmering on her smooth pale cheeks in the moonlight. Then, she sits down on the edge of the roof and drops her head so I can’t guess what she is feeling anymore. She sits for a long while, and I just stare, and this is the part that torments me the most, because I want so badly to slam open the window and call out to her, save her. But I can’t. I’m in paralysis. Then she slips herself off the concrete, and falls. And that is all.
This is her. This is the woman I loved. I look out and I see night after night this shadow of white plummet like a rock from the building. But then there is nothing: not the screeching wail of a police siren, not the scream of a horrified passer-by. Nothing to break the silence of the night.
You know, she didn’t kill herself by jumping, all those years ago. She killed herself by taking a bottle of Tylenol pills and washing a few handfuls down with Smirnoff vodka. As far as I know, she never even visited the building I see her on. She died in the comfort of her own bathroom, liquor and pharms driving her out of my life forever. But I don’t see her drinking anymore, I see her jumping. Night after night. It drives me insane.
You might ask whether I’m just dreaming, whether I see her die in horrific mental recollections. But don’t ask. I’m sick of thinking that way. I know it’s not a dream. Everyday, every single night, I watch her leave me. I did think it was a dream at first, a disturbingly vivid nightmare, but now I know I’m awake when it happens. It’s real.
So don’t say I dream.
It was four years ago; I know this because when something hellish happens to you, you can’t help but obsess compulsively over every date, every anniversary, every fucking swing of the season. I try. I try and I try to forget it, to leave it be, but I can’t. The month of October had become a mental prison for me. When each year I flip the calendar over from September I feel a wrenching pain churn in my gut. Usually, I like to drink during these days, and occasionally I’ll light up a deep bowl of marijuana in my small glass pipe. Straight back to high school for a month, man. But I don’t do it for fun. No, certainly not for fun. Don’t ever say that.
But it’s only in this particular October that I’ve started to see her jump. Why? Good question. Don’t ask. I don’t have an answer. So just don’t ask, alright? Maybe it has to do with the esoteric qualities of the number four and – but I don’t even care, because it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she’s there, and she jumps, and she dies. Again and again. I’ve seen her die so many times by now.
Oh God.
We had been together for a year – no short time – and we had known each other for a year before. But never, during the entire time, did she ever talk about her…depression? Is that what you would call it? I don’t know, and I never will. Whatever. Not when we were alone together did she say a word, not after sex, not when we were sharing a crisply smoking cigarette, not during any of the intimate times when we would share our secrets and desires and dreams did she talk about it.
But I did see signs. It kills me. I remember thinking a few times during our time together that she was acting strange here, or being moody there, or maybe drinking at an odd time of day, or maybe just drinking too much in general. But I never did anything. I never acted. It plays in my mind as a tormenting mantra: I never acted. I never acted. Do you know what true, raw guilt feels like? It makes you feel like nothing is worth living for. It drives you crazy. It haunts me more than anything that had we talked about that one small little thing, whatever it was that was bothering her…
Oh hell. I don’t know what to think. My mind is in complete chaos. I can’t think clearly.
But there is hope. She’s coming again tonight, and I am waiting for her. Tonight will be the night, I know it as sure as I know my own name. Tonight I will stop her, I’ll call out for her. It will be different.
No, I’ll do one better. I’ll go to the roof across from my apartment, and I’ll go to the top, and I’ll wait for her. Then I’ll stop her, I’ll save her. And if I can’t? I don’t know. But I know I won’t be able to go back home if she is not there. I’ll have to find another way to find her. There are other ways.
Because what destroys me utterly is this:
Every time I watch her through my window, every time she jumps, she smiles at me, and for all the world I know there could have been happiness.