I felt the wind pushing at my back, gently caressing me,
inviting me, as I stared down. I moved closer to the edge,
my toes dangling above the rocky base of the waterfall.
I stretched my arms out, a symbol of the crucifixion and closed
my eyes. The wind encircled me, pulling me away from the edge, the next
second pushing me closer. "Oh, God . . ." Tears streamed down my face,
mixing with the rain . . . I could taste the salt as they poured into my
open mouth. I thought about falling, how easy it would be to just let go . . .
Louise Erdrich wrote in Memoirs that there is time to think when you fall.
I wondered what I would think about. Would I regret my decision only for it to be too late?
I raised my arms up to the sky, trying to remember those I loved. I saw the faces of my
parents torn with grief. I saw the articles in the paper, Portland Girl Jumps from Bridge in
Stroudwater. References made to Scott Croteau, generation X and teen labeling. They would
include quotes from puzzled teachers, who never saw the fear, only the "untapped potential."
I thought about my songs; they would never get recorded now . . . Only lyrics and chords, non-sensical
to everyone but me . . . I thought about the children I would be leaving behind . . . My plan to be
a music teacher . . . But, most of all, I saw my friends, just over the hill . . . oblivious to my
inner struggle not 50 feet away.
"What am I doing?" I whispered, my throat choking back a sob. I threw myself backward, away from the edge. The guard rail supported my weight as I slumped against it. My breathing was ragged, uneven. I looked once again over the edge at what was almost my final resting place. I started shivering uncontrollably. I stood up, keeping a hand on the guard rail the whole time. I slowly lifted one leg over the rail and when it was planted solidly on the ground, I brought my other leg over it.
For a while I just sat there, on the other side. I didn’t move, I didn’t blink. In the back of my mind I heard the voices of my friends. Laughing, talking. How I wished I could feel that happy. They rounded the hill and came closer. It is difficult realizing that nearly every single person you’ve ever been interested in has not loved you in return. It is also difficult to realize that friendships are stronger than those unstable relationships. The pain of innocent rejection stings far too deeply. Life seems to span out indeterminately before you without any hope of love. After all, the past tends to repeat itself, does it not? Youth is a funny thing. It leads you to fork after fork. We are destined, as children, to take a wrong path. But, when that happens, we cannot simply turn around and retrace our steps back to the main road. Unfortunately, if we are to learn anything from our ventures, we must struggle through the forests and the underbrush, trying to make up the time we spent on the wrong road while trying to find the right road once again. The road that I am on now has a definite end looming right before me, so forgive me if I leave now to dive into the underbrush that will take me to the much more well-lit road; the fork I didn’t choose.
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