I wondered for a long time about the phrase falling in love. You are finding love, that’s how I liked to think about it. Falling implied such a loss of ability, such an uncontrolled drop from grace that it gave me shivers just thinking about how far I had to fall to find love. I didn’t want to fall, I was quite content with where I was, high above the normal trials and tribunes of common life. But I still wanted the love part, and I decided that if I must fall to find it, I would. I was set in my decision. Nothing would sway me.
And yet when love came and found me, in the form of pretty perfect girl, my summer sun in the dead of winter, I found myself being raised up with her, instead of suffering the fall I thought I had to go through. I concluded the phrase ‘falling in love’ was just that, a phrase people said because it sounded nice. You don’t actually fall when you find love, instead you fly, fly far away from reality, following the light of the sun. And it felt like the sun guided me in those perfect weeks. Everything was alright, nothing could possibly keep us down. It was paradise, utopia, dreams of the future and memories of the present overwhelming all else.
I remembered when our life cracked. I should have stopped then. I should have known that the good times never last. It began with a phrase. Something I said, that caught your mind. I was joking, of course, just being a funny guy. I liked to hear you laugh all the time, and when I was able to cause it, I knew everything would be alright.
We were lying in the grass of summer, hot and sticky but happy as the chirping birds. For a while, the sound of wind was our only music, but it didn’t matter, I would dance to the beat of your heart if need be.
You broke our contented silence, “Where will we be when the summer is over?”
My greatest weakness, the lack of thought. I spoke too quickly, blind to your mind, a quick joke being my only response. “Life is there to live and love, that’s my thoughts!”
I smiled at the sky, waiting for the tiny little late laugh. Something was up. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew whatever it was, it was wrong, out of place, not for us. The wind was cold and dark, the sun was blocked by clouds. You gave me a fake laugh, but I knew. I knew, in my heart, that things were not right, as hard as I tried to pretend. What goes up must come down.
And that’s what you said to me, when I found out the truth behind your love. “Life is there to live and love.” What had then sounded funny, now spoke volumes of your infidelidous to my heart. She didn’t see us together, she wasn’t ready, it was her, not me, the rest was static in my ears. I couldn’t feel, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t hear. I paid the bill, left the street, and followed my feet, trying to regain cognitive abilities.
Only now can I think clearly. My heart was given away to a cannibal. My soul had left already, my body was the only thing left to follow. And I had been wrong, oh so wrong. Falling in love was not about the action of finding love. It was falling in love. I was already in love, summiting Everest, and I fell after finding it. It was over as it had begun, a fall as fast as a silver bullet.
I stared out across the gorge. I had no love left, not for this world. What was the point? I took a step forward, closer to the abyss of silence, true silence, not that crap with the wind and the feeling of autumn on the horizon. It was all so easy to just fall.
It felt like a weak excuse. But if she wasn’t worth it, than who was? What was the point? I was past feeling, past life, past the little laughs that had sustained me for so long. I found myself balanced on the precipice of oblivion. A gust of that awful, awful autumn wind would push me off. Did I need the wind to fall? Could I do it alone? I closed my eyes, balancing my body on the scales of judgement, waiting for that inevitable wind. Waiting for the death I knew would find me one way or another.