Five.
My earliest memory is of mom apologizing to me for bringing me into this world, claiming
that it didn't deserve someone like me. I was too young to fully comprehend what she meant,
which is probably why she said it. For the first few years after she uttered these words, I went
around believing that I was somehow special. Believing that I deserved more than others, who
fought much harder, did.
My rude awakening came when I was a few years older and mom stopped looking at me
with love in her eyes. She called me evil and meant it. She embraced me and told me we'd stay
together forever a few moments later. I wish I had known what bipolar disorder meant back
then. Little did I know that mom and dad didn't know either.
The second time she apologized to me was when the house rumbled and the earth
shook, waking me. A crescent moon hung motionlessly in the sky, while objects were being
flung against the walls, shattering them into pieces too small to pick up. Mom and dad fought
quite often, but this night his steps sounded more definite; her screams more urgent. Dad had
bought a suitcase just for this occasion. A button-up shirt and a pair of dark green trousers were
the only articles of clothing he would leave behind.
Mom's watery eyes looked into mine as she spotted me, shrinkingly hiding my face
behind the doorpost. The look in her eyes was filled with an irrevocable sadness. It was the first
time I saw my face in hers.
That night mom explained to me what "divorce" meant. "It's when a mommy and daddy
don't love each other anymore." That probably meant they had been divorced for as long as I
knew them.
We saw his red car leave the driveway, crushing decomposing leaves under its tires as it
rolled away. This is how I would remember autumn.
“We don't need him," she told me after she must have noticed how distraught I was, "It's
just going to be the two of us now. We're going to have a lot of fun!"
She must have read my skepticism like letters on a page. "Hey, cheer up! It's not the end
of the world."
I dissected that sentence in my head repeatedly, wanting desperately to believe her. But
all I could think of was how that red car vanished out of sight; how dad just drove out of my life
like that. I never saw my face in his.
Four.
He didn’t quite sweep me off my feet, yet I made myself believe this is what love felt like.
My girlfriends talked about a horde of butterflies fluttering around in their stomachs, but I told
myself mine were still hatching in their cocoons, taking their time to transform into something
more beautiful. His kisses felt clumsy but endearing, and his “I love you’s” fell on deaf ears more
often that they did not. In retrospect, he probably just wanted to hear me say it back.
Since I knew him, Henry had felt the need to take care of me and protect me from
whatever came my way. He was my shield; brick by brick building an impenetrable wall around
me that I didn’t know I needed. When I was around him, I felt like nothing could hurt or even
touch me. Words, like bullets, ricocheted off of his armor. I both loved and hated him for this.
“I will always be there to catch you when you fall,” he once told me, seemingly out of the
blue. This made me resent him even more. So, I started falling. I became restless, like a bird
who suddenly realizes it is caged, finding out there is an entire world beyond its confines. I cut
my hair short and started driving off to places unknown, which felt like leaping from the highest
buildings, and as promised, Henry was unfalteringly there at the bottom, waiting to catch me. I
thanked him every time I found myself in the tight and concerned grip of his arms, but just
wanted to tell him that I was longing to find out what the ground felt like.
The world was changing, yet I tried to remain nailed down to the ground by the weight of
my recklessness. But Henry had succumbed to the transient state of life, rapidly turning into the
adult that he was afraid of becoming. This was during a time when the clash between
generations was at its peak. We blamed the older people for everything, while they thought it’d
be our responsibility to fix the world’s problem. The youth had grown bitter and angry. How
could we not?
“I don’t see any signs of improvement,” he said, his voice exactly what it's been like
during these last couple of months.
“Don’t say that,” I said in response, my eyes watery.
"Why are you crying?"
"I don’t know what’s happening," I said, trying to harden myself.
Whenever I told him I was scared, he used to look at me in a certain way as to say, “I’ve
given you everything. You have no right to be scared.” I fully understood that look, but it didn’t
help me from feeling terrified. He had given his everything to me, but slowly he started realizing
that his everything wasn’t enough, and he started taking down the wall he had built around me,
until there was no brick left. The more distance grew in between us, the more I wanted him. The
more I needed him. I let myself fall down countless of tall buildings.
"I don’t think this is going to work. Not now, at least. I think we’re just in different states of
mind at the moment.”
He was right, but I didn’t want to admit it. He was supposed to be my shield. He was
supposed to catch me.
“You’re going to find someone who’s a better fit. It's not the end of the World."
The ground hit me harder than I thought it would.
Three.
It’s as if I always left my over-thinking mind outside the door and all there was inside was
a shell of a body, telling him what he wanted to hear. My attention often drifted between the
incessant ticking of the clock, which was almost deafening if you paid attention to it, and the
sound of the swaying trees outside. The wind felt particularly aggressive that day.
His small glasses looked like they had shrunk from the last time I had visited him. The
amount of notes also became less frequent, as if he was steadily losing interest, or hope. I
wondered what Dr. Albright's first name was. He looked like a Theodore. I often asked myself if
he could tell that I really didn’t enjoy coming here. If he was even the slightest bit good at his
job, he should have been able to read me like a book.
“How do you feel about it all coming to an end?” he asked me matter-of-factly.
“Strangely okay,” I told him.
“Do you have any plans?”
“Three years seems both like an incredibly short and long time.”
“Do you have any plans?”
“I think so. But I don’t know if I can do them.”
“Why?”
“I’m scared.”
"What's the worst that can happen?"
"Everything will turn out badly."
"Why do you think that?"
"Because it always does."
"It's not the end of the world yet, you know?"
"But what if it is?"
"We would all notice.”
"I'm paying for this."
"It's not the end of the world."
"I feel like I can't breathe sometimes."
"It's not the end."
"I can't."
"It's not the end."
"It sure feels like it."
"It's not."
That was the last time I went to see Dr. Albright. He'd never been a terrific listener.
Two.
She'd been the first woman I had truly fallen for; so fiery and passionate that you can’t
look away, like a captivating storm you admire from a distance. Hurricane Eva; I found myself in
the middle of it, the wind thrusting me from left to right, holding onto anything I could, but
indescribably happy to be taken by it.
I saw her cry just once during the time that we’d been together. It was back when we
were still getting to know each other, when we still had more time. We went up to the roof of her
building, which looked out over a small part of the city. Everything looked tiny and vulnerable. I
saw her wipe away a tear.
“Isn’t it weird,” she said, “that it had to come to this for everyone to get along and realize
our true potential?”
She looked at me in a way no one had before. There was a beautiful melancholy in her
eyes. It was the first time we kissed. It felt like our lips had been made for each other.
From that moment on, we kissed everywhere. All I wanted was to be hers, and for me to
never call her mine. She was far too precious to be claimed by anyone, including me. Her words
carried a special weight and sadness to them, which put you under an unbreakable spell. I
would blindly follow her into the darkest of places. With her everything fell into place. She
became an extension of me; a body part that I had only recently discovered.
The radio broadcasts announced that we had about two weeks left. The world was
slowly learning to accept it. I saw a future with her, but as the end was nearing, all she longed
for was her past. She’d never been the nostalgic type, but all her conversations slowly started
revolving around past lovers and distant memories. She talked about her previous self in a
wistful manner, and I listened unwaveringly. Her words would linger, floating in the air in front of
me. It was almost as if I could touch them.
I wanted to spend the last two weeks in her arms, whispering tiny secrets to each other
in the dark. I wanted to hold her close and tell her that I loved her. I wanted to watch the world
end with her, but I became aware of the distance between our embraces that seemed to grow
bigger and wider every day. It was a Saturday when I heard her quietly pack her suitcase in the
dead of night while she thought I was fast asleep. She wrote me a note, and left. I didn’t open
my eyes until Sunday evening.
I have to see some people. But I’ll be back. We still have time. It’s not yet the end of the world.
But I could see the sadness in her handwriting. I could read our ever-growing distance between
the letters. Her last words ringing in my ears, echoing infinitely in my head. I wouldn’t see her
again. It was autumn.
One.
The television screens either showed nothing but empty seats behind news desks, or a
black impending void. The radio hosts had left classical music playing on a never-ending loop,
probably already far away from the station. Loved ones held each other more tightly than they
ever had. Strangers that would normally never even acknowledge one another, buried
themselves in each other’s arms, channeling their remaining comfort and warmth through their
touch.
During these last few seconds, I started thinking of everyone who has, in some way,
shaped me; the people I have loved and lost who turned me into the woman I am today. I
wonder where they all are; who they’re with. I walked around, matching my footsteps with the
seconds I had left on this world. Five, four, three, two, one...
Trees caught fire like matches do. If only I could have simply blown them out, wishing
that the world around me wouldn't burn up as quickly as it did; wishing that I'd have someone to
share this one moment with. I told myself repeatedly, almost like a comforting mantra, it's not
the end of the world. It can't be. But looking up, I realized that in fact, it was. I just wished I could
wish hard enough that wasn't the case.
The End.
And then it happened. Just like that.