Talk to Me

The night is cold and crisp; the environment surround the little apartment building is filled of activity. There was nothing out of the average; it was a Friday night in the middle of February, a cold month in the city, but people were still going about as lively as they do in spring. Teenagers were going to the movies, college students were drinking, parents were waiting up for there kids, couples were dates, and as usual Ann was sitting along the window of her apartment on the top floor of a run down building.
She was one who usually kept to her self, and her only companion was her pet Yourkie, Ginger. She was alone in the big city, her parents past away shortly after she finished high school and was too self conscious to ever have a boy-friend. She wasn’t at all ugly or dumb; she was just always on the edge of breaking down. She was never truly stable, and the scars on her wrists proved it. When her parents past away, depression settled in their place, and she was closed off from the rest of the world, left in the company of numbness.
She barely got by in paying rent and feeding Ginger and herself; in consequence she didn’t get to pay the electric bill. So she sat in her apartment lit up by a few candles all by her lonsom. Ginger was snuggled up in the bed in the middle of the mattress and bed-comforters so she wasn’t concerned about her freezing. As for herself, she was wearing her whole entire closet yet she still couldn’t stop shivering. Since the electricity was out that meant no T.V., no radio, no internet, or anything else, so she watched people leading there lives as they pleased through her window. There were all kinds of people out that night, but nothing caught her fancy. After a while of the bitter cold and boredom she decided to go to the roof- she would always spend time there during the summer and spring when she felt life dealt her a bad hand, just to clear her mind.
She then walked out of her apartment and locked the door behind her. As she made her way up all she was able to hear was the pitter-patter of her own foot steps. On arriving to the door on the top of the flight of stairs she saw it was ajar. This puzzled her; she was usually the only one to ever come up here. Throughout all the years that she had resided here she had never seen anybody up there, she’s never even had a companion with her. She cautiously opened the door and stuck her head out. She turned her head side to side to see if anyone was there, but she didn’t. So slowly she creeped through the door way and took a few paces out on the roof. Then she heard a hard cough.
Almost instantly she turned to see that it came from a man looking at the street bellow, on top of the ledge. It was obvious that he was oblivious to her presence, that he had more important things going through his mind. At first she was scared, but then noticed the guy hadn’t seen her. She didn’t know whether to say hi or remain unnoticed and go back to her cold apartment with Ginger, but something about this guy that engrossed her. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but there was something about the way he looked at the street. She thought a moment and then it hit her. She had felt as though someone had just slapped her across the face. He had the same glare in his eyes as she did when she was looking at the razor when she attempted suicide… this guy was about to kill himself.
A sudden fear perplexed her; she couldn’t see someone kill their-self, she was already messed up and wouldn’t be able to take it. She now felt hot and had no idea what she was going to do. She knew the mentality of a person wanting to commit suicide first hand, and if she was going to convince him to not jump it would take one hell of a miracle. She knew that she had to stop him but she couldn’t move, and the tears were already starting to come. So she prayed, “ God, I know that I never pray to you unless I need help, but I really need some strength from you to let me talk this guy out of killing himself, please help me,” and with that done she was finally able to yelp a quick “ Hi!”
He didn’t turn to look at her; he just closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and remained silent. She scratched her head and urgently searched for the words to say, frantically trying to find a way to ail his desperate and closed off heart. Her tension was high yet it seemed that the man remained calm, but she knew that deep within there was a wailing of terror and tears desperately crying for help. So she just blurted the first thing that came to her mind, “cold night tonight, huh?” He opened his eyes. “Ha-ha… um… You know I couldn’t stand being in my apartment. The only one there to keep me company was my dog Ginger, she really doesn’t converse much,” due to her nervousness she broke into a rant. “My heater broke and I just needed to clear my head so I came out here, and I saw you then…” She stopped talking once he turned and focused his eyes on hers. They were sad and blue, and at that moment she wasn’t able to see anything but his dark blue eyes. On seeing the sorrow in his eyes it reminded her of how bad she used to be.
There was a long pause; nothing else existed in the world, and all Ann was able to see was this troubled man, the same way she was troubled for years. For the first time in her life she able to help somebody other than herself, but she wasn’t able to even get him to talk. He looked away then back down to the street below, but in trying to get his attention again she said, “Would you like to go get a cup of coffee across the street? You know I’m kind of lonely, I would really like the company.”
He swiftly turned to look at her and finally spoke, “Lonely? Do you even know what lonely is, complete isolation? You know true loneliness once your imagination has even left you, when you’re so accustom to being by yourself for so long, it’s impossible to imagine having a friend. Loneliness is something many people believe they experience, but only few truly feel it. Have you… ever felt that way?”
Ann looked strait at him; there was a short pause, but it wasn’t because she was hesitant to answer, it was because she was scared of her response. “Yes, I’ve felt every thing you just said. So far, you’ve had the best description I’ve ever heard for what true loneliness is.” Her eyes started to well up, and for the first time in a while she wanted to cry, not because she was injured or desperate, but because she was actually feeling something, he noticed.
“Can you leave me alone; I wish to die in peace.” He gave her a week smile.
At this she was suddenly enraged, “It’s nothing personal towards you but I can’t do that. I can’t let you jump. I’ve already let one person almost kill their self and I’m not going to let it happen again. Don’t you see, there is just too much to live for even if y…”
He interrupted, “there’s NOTHING to live for! That’s what I see, nothing. You can never understand what I see. Look, I’m sorry someone dear to you killed their self, but they did concern you, I don’t. So leave me alone. I’m in a place I can never leave, in a permanent state of mind you can’t comprehend.”
Her nostrils flared and she wrinkled up her faced. She was so angry at his response that she pulled up her left sleeve and showed him her scar. “You see! I’ve been there. I’ve tried to kill myself; I know exactly what you’re going through. I’ve been with a room full of people and felt completely alone. I’ve felt invisible and useless. But you know what? I’m so happy that I didn’t succeed in killing myself, even though I do feel lonely and depressed from time to time.”
He then turned to look at the sky. Something she said must have hit him hard because he now had a lump in his throat. He had to swallow hard to make it go away. He then said, “have you ever lost the person dearest to you? Someone you loved with all that you had to give. Do you know what it’s like to lose that one person and then everything else along with her?”
Grief slowly settled in the back of Ann’s mind. The memory of losing her parents was unbearable, but she finally knew what she had to say, “When I was 18 I lost both of my parents. They were flying back from a business trip when the plane hit an air pocket, there was no way anybody could have survived that crash, there no exception with my parents.”
Tears now rolled down her cheeks, gently reflecting the city lights. Now feeling obligated to at least giving her a reason why he was contemplating suicide he spoke, “I was an orphan growing up, no one cared about me. The one day, once I was on my own, I met a girl and we fell in love. We got married in a church just outside the city. A year later she had a miscarriage, so we went to the doctor to see what went wrong, turned out to be terminal cancer. The cancer had made her body to weak to bear a child, and within the year she died. Ever since then not a day goes by I feel my wounds tearing wider. I feel like I can’t ever be happy while my wife and unborn son are dead. I feel as if it wouldn’t be fair to them.” Now he too was crying, feeling the sting of his old wounds clawing at his existence.
“What was her name?” Ann sincerely asked.
“Catherine,” he said with pride.
She thought for a moment, then said, “Don’t you think Catherine would want you appreciating your life? If you would have died in her place wouldn’t you have wanted her to live her life to the fullest: to go met another person that would love her, treat her with the same kindness that you treated her with, to have children, grow old, and be happy? Wouldn’t you want that for her? Don’t you think it would have hurt her to know that she caused you such pain? Don’t you think she would want you to be happy? Please, think about it for just a moment. Don’t you want to live out a full life for her?”
He now started crying more than before, he could no longer hold himself together. He finally realized why he was in such great pain, because he was hurting his dearly missed wife in ways he didn’t realize. “Do you really think she would want me to be happy?”
She smiled at him and said, “I know she would.”
After he brushed away his tears and settled down, he jumped on to the roof and hugged Ann. “Thank you...?”
“Ann, my name is Ann.”
“Well Ann, how about that coffee?”