Letting Go

With arms open, he stood atop a one hundred story building over looking the city. The sun on the horizon was slowly rising like a giant flaming ball and the sky turned deep shades of red lifting away the darkness. Light streamed into the deep cracks and crevasses of the earth intensifying the ugliness of the world, peeling away the dark layers that enveloped them only to reveal the grotesque insides that it would have rather have kept hidden. The moon and its companions lingered slightly in the fading of the night. The stars faded with the night and the purple rimmed clouds dawdled behind.
The air was thick and hazy with smog. Smoke stacks jutted abruptly into the sky, their little lights blinking. Below in the streets cars were moving sluggishly through traffic. Car exhaust filled the air and made it dense. Vendors were shouting out deals for the day and taxi cabs sounded their horns to people who cut them off. Cellphone rang out and endless noise was everywhere. People were just as bad, excreting their own invisible toxins, poisoned tongues, combustible tempers, causing even more damage. The gases, garbage, and stench from the low lifes and misfits below made their way up to his nostrils. He breathed deep, his lungs expanding, letting in all the odor from below.
He stood there with the poisons in his lungs overlooking the city. He looked below to the people moving quickly on the sidewalks, making their abrupt twists and turns thru each other to get to work. Women in their fancy business attire and the flea ridden homeless man pushing his cart of worldly possessions. They seemed so small, so insignificant. Taking one last look over the edge and out to the horizon he took a step closer to the edge. His toes hung slightly over, then with eyes closed, he fell forward.
In each passing second the pavement below grew closer and the reality of the impact inevitable. No scream emitted from his lips as his face went flying past the windows. His body twisted and somersaulted through the decent; then it happened.
Impact was made with the floor. Kevin bolded upright, eyes wide and chest heaving. He looked around anxiously and found himself on the floor next to his bed. The dream had seemed so real, the city, the building, the fall. Slowly he brought a clammy hand to his face and slid it over his sleep deprived eyes. His shaking hands pulled the twisted sheets away from his lean body, which was covered in a thin layer of cold sweat. His dark curls were wet and stuck to his forehead which began to pulse. Slightly quaking he rose from the floor and sat on the edge of his bed.
The room was aglow with a slight red tinge from his alarm clock that was blinking 12:34. Lightning had caused a power surge, and outside his window, the storm continued. Kevin stood up and looked through the streams of water running down the glass. Black menacing clouds crept across the sky. They were illuminated by erratic flashes of lightning and sheets of rain were visible under the flickering yellow streetlights. Trees bent in all directions under the force of the wind.
He looked down the street at all the uniform suburban houses. Everything was cookie cutter perfect, the houses, the lawns, the owners, even the little white fences that separated them all. A loose gate swung in the wind a few houses down. No light shown through the large dark windows. Everyone was asleep.
The room was humid and Kevin opened the window. Rain blew in, cooling the air and wetting down his already damp clothes. He stood there a few seconds letting the rain cover his face. Still feeling warm he rolled up his shirt sleeves, but careful not to go past the elbow even though he was alone. It was a nervous habit. The cool drops danced along his fair skin creating little goose bumps.
Feeling better, he closed the window and looked at the deserted street before closing his blinds on the storm. Kevin stumbled across the floor and collapsed on his bed. The feather pillow brought no comfort and the mattress was not inviting. Lying there for awhile, looking up at the dark empty ceiling, he came to the conclusion that he was not going to fall asleep. His eyes felt dry, puffy, and heavy. His head continued to throb, keeping in time with the still pulsating clock. With a frustrating sigh, he rolled out of bed and walked over to his desk.
Turning the grey swivel chair around, he sat down and looked at the papers the threatened to overflow onto the floor. Kevin was the editor of the high school newspaper, the Eagle Tribune. Lately however, he had started to fall behind. His column was being neglected and stories were going unedited. He couldn’t concentrate. His nights were interrupted by nightmares that kept showing the same images over and over again. The lack of sleep was beginning to take its toll.
He turned towards his computer and the quiet humming comforted him. The gears were changing, constantly spinning, like the wheels within his own head. The different cogs of thought and emotion gyrating at nonchalant speeds. The familiar screen of space and other galactic designs popped up to greet him. The blue colors illuminated his face accenting his sharp features. His tired eyes had large purple circles beneath them and his skin looked pale from the blue hue.
He entered into the word processing program looking for something to work on to help him fall asleep. Looking for a folder that had long been neglected he found one label Forgotten. Most files were unedited stories that never got published but that he couldn’t seem to part with. Scrolling down the different titles he noticed one that made stomach tighten. E.L.N. Emily Lynn Norton. Less than a year ago he had interviewed Emily for the school paper.
Emily was the type of girl who had it all. Her grades were phenomenal and she was always involved with her community and her school. She was very outgoing and always participated in the school plays and was a leader in many other school clubs. Everyone really believed that she could do something with her life, that she could make it. Emily was nice to everyone, even those that others had overlooked.
Kevin could still picture her the day he went to her house for the interview. Her long brown curls were pulled back in a messy up due and she was sporting sweatpants and a sweatshirt. He had been so intrigued with her hazel eyes and warm, confident smile. Beauty and brains, she had it all. Or so everyone thought.
After being at Emily’s for a few hours Kevin realized that the two had a lot in common. They enjoyed the same type of music and both had a passion for literature. At one point during their discussion Emily took off her sweatshirt. The t-shirt she wore underneath rose a little revealing her slightly tanned torso and to Kevin’s amazement scars. They weren’t the kind that one got from surgery or falling out of a tree as a kid. He was only too familiar with them. They were faint, thin lines, that were slightly lighter then the rest of her skin. He averted his eyes and thought of only one question; why?
Kevin periodically stopped by Emily’s house over the next few weeks, claiming to be working on the article, and eventually the two were seen together regularly. Kevin never imagined that he could ever end up with someone as wonderful as Emily. She was smart, caring, funny, and she held the same secret that he himself held.
Kevin stared at the computer screen. The once humid room seemed to have turned freezing cold. He hesitantly opened up the E.L.N. file and the article he had written was staring back at him. It was a lie, all of it. The Emily he wrote about was the one that everyone knew, or at least thought that they knew. It was about the Emily that had no problems, no fears, no enemies. A lump rose in his throat thinking about her. After a few minutes of reading, Kevin opened up a blank page and decided to write another article, one about the real Emily. The Emily that he knew and loved.
He sat there, staring at the screen. It seemed to be copying him, doing nothing, staying blank. The computer refused to write for him just has his fingers refused to move to the keys. The blinking cursor laughed at him mockingly, daring him to reveal the secrets of his life and those he loved. Slowly he raised his hands and moved his fingers towards the keys. They hovered for a few seconds then began to type. One word. One phrase. One paragraph. One page. His breath started to quicken and he was soon typing fast. All his senses seemed to sharpen and his memory was working in overdrive.
The words raced across the page like an experienced sprinter. He couldn’t seem to get it all out fast enough. All his emotions started to pour out of him. The anger, hate, frustration, love, and confusion. They oozed out of his fingertips which were now one with the keys.
Emily wasn’t happy and she hadn’t been for a long time. Kevin learned that her mother was a drunk whose only happiness could be found at the bottom of a bottle. She slept most of the day away in her room, and when she wasn’t passed out on her bed, she was verbally and emotionally abusive. At night she would get dressed and go out on the town spending her husband’s money, and slandering his name. Kevin had only seen Emily’s mother once, and that was when she stumbled from her bedroom to the kitchen to grab another bottle of vodka. Emily’s father was hardly ever home. He was always away on business, mostly Kevin expected, to get away from his wife and to meet up with the young chippie he kept on the side.
Emily was disappointed with her parents and herself. She tried so hard to please them, winning awards left and right, but it was never good enough. Nothing she ever did was good enough. She juggled responsibilities between home, school, work, and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of her life and it was all beginning to be too much. She began to crack under the pressure of trying to be perfect. She found flaws in everything that she did and had expectations for herself that were impossible to meet. Everyday she painted a perfect smile on her face and no one ever suspected that on the inside she was falling apart.
Kevin finally worked up the nerve one day to ask Emily about the scars that he had seen on her stomach the first day they had had the interview. She had looked at him with such sad shameful eyes. Slowly she raised her shirt and had shown him the scars that covered her torso, some of which looked fresh. At the time Kevin wanted to do nothing more than to pull her close to him and hold her. Looking back on it now he wished he would have.
His fingers continued to fly over the keys as he typed, uncovering not only Emily’s secrets, but now his own. He wasn’t quite sure what had gone wrong or what had happened to make him this way. Growing up he had been really happy. He laughed, he loved, he cared, but now he felt strangled. Usually he would vent his feelings by writing, that’s why he had joined the school paper. It was his own private therapy session. Over the past few months however, it didn’t seem to help, it became more like a chore.
He sunk into a world filled with voices of anger and pain. Voices screaming at him and tearing at his insides. They were yelling and pushing, trying to get out. It felt like twenty chisels were cutting at his head trying to get inside, ready to dissect every thought and idea he had. His eyes were filled with pain, and a sense of lost hope. It was the same look he had recognized in Emily.
Before he had met her, Kevin was headed further down a destructive road. He no longer felt human, but more like a shell. A shell of a person who used to be, who used to exist. He felt as if he was walking among the halls mechanically, on auto pilot. Like a sheet of glass you could look through him, walk past him, and never even know he was there.
But then he had been assigned to interview Emily. Soon it felt as though his life had meaning again, a purpose. It saddened him to see the cuts on her body. He would trace their pale surface trying to take away the pain that had caused them. Kevin thought that maybe they could help each other that together they would heal.
He stopped for a moment, and looked over what had been written on the screen. The temperature in the room shifted once again, and sweat formed on his wrinkled brow. He looked down at his shirt, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow and decided to throw all caution to the wind, so what if someone walked in and saw him, he didn’t care anymore. He pulled the shirt over his head and revealed the cuts and scars along his upper arms. The white light from the computer made them jump out, creating a harsh contrast with his skin. He heaved himself out of the chair and walked into his bathroom. He groped along the wall for the switch and soon flooded the tiny space with light. Hesitantly he lifted his head to look into the mirror.
Someone unfamiliar stared back at him. The steel blue eyes were pale and cold. Dark circles formed under the eyes and the face looked shallow and pale. This couldn’t be his reflection. The person staring at him looked so frightened and scared. Kevin turned away from the stranger before him and ran a shaking finger along his arm. Long purple scars wrapped around his arms like vines that reflected an ancient pain. Deep, red, weeping wounds showed a new frustration.
Tracing his scars, he thought back to the many times late at night when he would go into his bathroom and open up the medicine cabinet. In the far left corner he kept a razor. Slowly he would bring the blade across his arms. Sometimes he prayed for the courage just to press down harder. His senses were so numb that he needed pain to know if he still existed. He got his answer when the razor punctured his skin. First he felt a stinging sensation, then relief. There was something in his life he could still control. He decided how hard to push down, how much to hurt, how much to bleed.
The black red blood ran down his arms like the endless tears that ran down his face. His body wept many times with anguish and suffering. Hurt, pain, sickness, and brutality pumped through his veins, and it was released when he cut his flesh. Blood had stained the razors edge not with color but with feeling. He could feel it when the blade was under his skin, slicing the veins and calling to the crimson liquid to escape.
Kevin brought his gaze back up to the mirror and found the scene funny, ironic even. His body now looked on the outside how he felt on the inside. The school newspaper had brought Emily and Kevin together, but the razor bonded them. They both shared a secret that no one else knew about. Eventually they both promised that they would no longer harm themselves, because now they had each other. They would both fill a void that the other had felt for so long. Unfortunately in the end, both had broken their promises. Turning off the light, razor in hand, Kevin shuffled back to his computer.
He began typing about the stranger he had just seen in his mirror when an image popped into his head. It was the one that had been keeping him awake late at night. It was of the last time he had seen her face. Kevin dropped his head heavily into his hands and tears slowly ran from his eyes. He remembered seeing her after they had cut her down from the ceiling and they gently covered her with a sterile sheet. A new wave of tears streamed down his face and his body was overtaken with sobs. He had tried so hard to forget, to forget the last time he saw her face. Kevin gasped for breath, trying to get himself under control. After a few minutes his breathing slowed, but his body continued to shake. Face streaked with tears, he moved his trembling fingers back to the keys.
Kevin had to stay focused on the task at hand. He decided to write about the letter that Emily had left on her nightstand. She told him how much she loved him and how sorry she was that it had to end the way that it did. Her will had not been strong enough. She could not keep fighting in a seemingly endless war with herself. She asked him to write her story, to help others and to help himself but at the time he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Also enclosed in the letter, was a razor, the one she had used so many times before. A little note was wrapped around it that said, “I promised that I would never hurt myself again, because I loved you, but I didn’t know how to let it go. Hopefully you will find a better way. We’ve been through so much together, good and the bad. Please don’t forget them. All I ask of you now is to let go of the pain I’ve caused, and to let go of me. You always were the stronger one. Don’t let me down.”
His fingers stopped, and everything was still. Even the storm outside his window had come to a stop. Only the hum of the computer and his shallow breathes reached his ears. Kevin stares at what he has written. His very life, his secrets, her secrets, stared at him. The terrible things his mind had regurgitated were all plastered up on the computer screen. Every word reminded him of the demons that continued to lurk within him, just under the skin. He scrolled up to the top of the page and began to read. His stomach was tight and a lump rose in his throat but no tears emerged.
Finally he moved the arrow key up to the toolbar and clicked print. He wasn’t sure how many copies he made, but it didn’t matter. The printer came to life and started to print everything out one letter at a time. One word. One phrase. One paragraph. One page. He was finally going to tell the world Emily’s story. She had helped him to save his own life, and now he was going to help others, others just like Emily. Instead of trying to forget her, he wanted to keep her real and raw in his memory. He wanted to remember everything she stood for, the seemingly forgotten people she represented.
He leaned back in his chair and picked up the little razor by the keyboard. Staring at the blade he turned it over in his fingers. Amazing how something so small could cause so much pain yet so much growth. He found a black marker in his desk drawer and in thin letters wrote, EMILY. Kevin looked at the computer screen and saved the file somewhere where it wouldn’t be forgotten. Then glancing down at the razor one last time, he hesitantly dropped it into the wastebasket on the floor. He had let it go. He had let her go.
With a small smile of his face and eyes slightly sagging, he walked back to his bed thinking Emily the way he remembered her. He crawled under the covers and fell asleep to the sounds of the printer bringing her story to life.