Jumping Off

The first time I understood how difficult it was to communicate was when I heard the story of the Tower of Babel.

Mankind united to build a tower tall enough to reach the heavens, to be closer to God. Infuriated by the 'greed' of humans, God destroyed the tower and cursed the humans to become incapable of understanding one another. Therein originated the various languages we see today. Even though I was born a Catholic, my parents brought me up to be an atheist. Therefore, these Biblical stories were treated as fictional in our home, much like any other fairytale that my grandparents told me on date nights. When I grew older and was attending college, I was flabbergasted by how, without realizing it, some person in ancient times had theorized that it was impossible to express meaning through language. The meaning of a word was ever changing and only understood because it was not something else. More curious is that meaning is eternally deferred—pick up a dictionary and find the meaning of a word. Then find the meaning of the word associated with it, and keep going until you find the meaning of the n-th word without referring to another word. Therefore, we are incapable of communicating meaning directly and understanding one another lays great emphasis on personal perception or understanding of the situation.

This fascination with the inability to communicate drove me to major in foreign languages. I wanted to communicate with more people to understand their culture, their perception of a certain situation so that I could finally understand what I was feeling, what anyone else was feeling at the moment without having to distort the meaning of the emotions by my personal bias. An impossible task, as I have come to understand. Yet, this drive helped me lessen the burden of guilt I bore; it made me feel more alive than I had when I had been found by the police after six months of living in hell.

.-.-.-.-.

It was one of those mornings where everything seemed to be perfectly normal, but then you would go to the balcony to stretch and hear the police sirens on the street below. It so happened that the woman on the neighboring balcony had thought it convenient to attempt suicide at eight thirty in the morning.

It was bad enough that it was a weekday and people were rushing to the office and cursing the traffic, and now one entitled woman just ruined their schedule and thought that screaming about how unfair her life was would bring sympathy from those on the street below.

I leaned against the metal railing and took a good look at her face.

I lived in a considerably expensive apartment with a fabulous security detail and the neighborhood was inviting and filled with familiar faces. This woman, though, I had never seen. Of course, I knew that my next door neighbor was a woman in her late twenties who often had her boyfriend over and didn't like to leave her apartment unless her boyfriend invited her out. I would also hear the sounds of them fornicating late at night when I came out to the balcony to get some fresh air.

"Excuse me," I tried calling her. She turned to me, with a look of horror on her face. She was carefully balanced on the ledge protruding beyond the railing, and I commended her on her catlike balancing trick.

"Move back or I will jump!" she threatened, her voice shaking.

"Actually, do you have any honey at your place? I need some for the smoothie and I knew that I wouldn't find you if I knocked on your front door," I laughed slightly, pretending to be nervous.

"Are you insane?" she screeched.

Good god, woman. I can hear you perfectly fine without you scratching my eardrums!

"I would like to ask you the same," I told her, offended. "Why are you trying to jump off?" I scoffed. We were on the fourth floor.

"Shut up!"

'Be a good human being. Be a good human being. Be a good human being.'

"Okay, go ahead." I shrugged. "I'll have to disappoint you, though." I paused for a bit, reading her expression. She seemed panicked and grasping at straws.

Clearly, she wasn't sure that she would kill herself. She wouldn't be making a spectacle if she was.

"If you jump from here, there is a fifty-fifty chance of survival. You would probably fall lower body first and break your limbs and spinal cord, and your face would be crushed. If you die, it will be an unremarkable, messy death with your brain splattered on the sidewalk, if you survive, it would mean surgery, rehabilitation, plastic surgery, and a trip to the psychiatric ward—you would lose money and your beauty." I spoke matter-of-factly, knowing that she loved her appearance too much.

I could almost laugh! The designer sleepwear she was wearing could feed me for a couple of months. And no one wakes up from sleep with a full face of makeup, contouring, fake-eyelashes and all.

"Fifty-fifty?" she squeaked.

"If you really want to jump, then do. If you are conflicted, we could toss a coin and leave the rest to fate," I suggested. She gulped, wanting to deny, but her pride stopped her. She nodded slightly, her eyes glazing over with unshed tear.

"Wait for a bit, then. I'll come over and help you toss that coin." I tried to suppress the huge grin but failed miserably.

I must have looked terrifying to her at that moment.

I gripped the railing in one hand and the wall of the building with the other and jerked my body upward so that I could stand on the railing, perfectly balanced. The drop was quite a bit and the gap between the two balconies about two feet. Letting my hands go, I prepared to fling my body forward. From under me, I heard desperate calls for help and questions about my sanity.

I chuckled as I lunged forward and ended on the railing of my neighbor's balcony. Even the girl balanced on the ledge seemed to gasp at the event. I shrugged and hopped down to the floor.

I fished my pocket for a coin and found one that was perfectly acceptable.

"Here," I announced, holding the coin up. "Heads says death and Tails says life? What say you?" She nodded jerkily, dazed.

"Look carefully at the coin as I flip it," I instructed her gently. "Don't take your eyes off it." I closed the distance between us.

"One."

"Two."

"Three."

I flipped the coin. As her eyes followed the coin closely, I saw it widen. It went past her head and started dropping to the street below.

A low scream escaped her and I grabbed onto her torso firmly and pulled her over the railing and into the balcony with the force of my full body.

"Why did he cheat on me?" she wailed.

'I did not sign up for this.'

I wiped the dust off my hands and got up on my feet.

'Wow. She needs to clean.'

I dragged her by the hand to the front door and opened it. I could hear the sounds of rushing footsteps coming up the stairs and knew that the emergency responders were finally taking action. I let them in and let myself out.

I sighed as I remembered that I had locked myself out.

"Guys?" I asked, exasperated. They turned to look at me. "I locked myself out. Breaking down the door would be too much of a hassle, so I will just go out through the balcony, okay?" Not giving them much time to protest, I walked back to the balcony and helped myself into my apartment.

'Dammit. I am going to be late for class.'

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