It's Okay

It's cold, but you decide to go for a walk anyway. Things are getting pretty stressful; you're arguing with your partner, or your friend, or whatever they are, and you're fed up of just sitting there and reading text after text. Fed up of that white phone screen burning your retinas. Whatever, you decide you don't need to justify yourself. You're an adult and you can go for a walk if you want to. You swap the lights of a phone with the yellow lights of a street lamp. You wish you could see stars, like you used to when you were younger. But it's too bright now. Or, maybe you never even saw stars when you were younger at all, and it's just one of those fake memories that your brain makes up sometimes to make you miss things. Stars would be nice, though. You pull your coat around yourself tighter as to begin walking across the footpath of the bridge beside your home. It really //is// cold. It was a stupid idea to go for a walk, but the night air is still kind of comforting. You don't notice him at first, because you're thinking about how cold it is and having imaginary arguments in your head. But eventually you do. He's not bundled against the cold. Instead he's only in a thin t-shirt and pyjama trousers. Like he just got up and left somewhere. Like he didn't even think about the cold. He's standing against the waist-high barrier of the bridge, just looking at the water down below. You've looked into that water before, measured the distance yourself. He's not crying, he's barely even breathing. He's just looking at the water below. You decide to: [[Stop and ask if he's okay->Stop]] [[Just carry on walking->Carry On]]

You stop beside him, but not too close. He doesn't hear you. You can't hear his breath but you can see the rapid pants warming the cold air surrounding his mouth. "Hello?" you say, and he startles in response. He turns his head towards you, but you can't really make out his features in the dim lighting of the street-lit bridge. "What?" he says in return, and his voice is frayed and cracked. You think he could probably do with a drink of water. So, you've stopped by this random dude on a bridge. Now what? [[Ask if he's cold->cold?]] //[[This has nothing to do with you. You don't know him. You don't have to do this.->Carry On]]//

You decide to continue. After all, he seems...okay, and you have other things on your mind. You just wanted a walk, it's not like you have to stop for any rando on the street who looks a bit glum. You're right. This isn't your job. This isn't your life. You have other things to think about. It's okay, I promise. It //is// okay. Half an hour passes before you turn back on yourself and walk home. You walk back across the bridge. There's no sign of the man. There's no police cars or ambulances. Maybe he went home, went to bed. Maybe he'd never been there at all. You think about him for an hour after that. Wonder about why he looked so morose on the bridge. Wonder what he was thinking about. The day after, you make up with the person you'd been arguing with. A month soon passes and you've already passed the bridge a dozen times since. You thought about him once, or even twice, but that's all. And it really is okay. You have things to do. So you do them. THE END (text-colour:magenta)[Author's Note: I guess sometimes I think a lot about the actions that I don't take and how that can effect the lives of the people around me. But I think ultimately you have to make things better for yourself, so you can make things better for people around you. But, I don't know. I find it hard to carry that around with me sometimes. I think maybe its the OCD in me; I feel guilty when I do something, I feel guilty when I do nothing. I wrestle a lot with the knowledge that I'm one single creature in a world that's so vast and ultimately nothing I do makes a difference. But it also does. Because the entire world is made out of little things. And people's entire lives, or deaths. are made out of little things too. But we're all just people. And none of us know what's important and what isn't. I guess maybe this is me saying to be kinder to yourself for mistakes, but understand the weight that those mistakes can have. I have no clue, really.] [[Would you like to try again?->Going For a Walk]]

So this is just like a therapy piece that I decided to write. It's not excessively well written, it's nothing different or new or exciting. Nothing poetic or life-altering. It's just something I wrote for me, that I'm passing onto you. I'm really struggling with a lot of things right now, and when I struggle I dip into the worlds and characters I have in my head and pretend to be somebody else with completely different problems and feelings. So I guess this is part that, and part me. This piece involves talk of suicide, depression and probably other mental health stuff. I'm not going to be graphic, or violent, but it's there and it'll be aggressively in your face. If you're not in a position to read those sort of emotions, please look after yourself and don't read them. I may know you, or not know you. But I care about you. And I don't want you to hurt yourself by reading something that you're not able to process right now. Okay, I hope this is something. But I feel like it might be nothing, like a lot of things. This is very short. There are only two endings. And neither of them are happy endings, because things so rarely end happily. Ultimately, this is a story about how I'm both a man taking a walk, and a man standing on a bridge. Well, if you're ready then [[click here->Going For a Walk]]

"Aren't you cold? It's two degrees tonight. You should have worn a coat." The man says nothing for a while, before you see his shoulders rise and fall. "I guess I didn't think about that. Was just in a rush." "So, why the rush?" You give a slight smile, attempting to make the situation lighter. "You just had to desperately come out and stare down at the water for a bit?" Again, you're met with a moment of silence. And then he laughs, but it's bitter and cold, and inexplicably angry, and you really wonder how you can get all of those emotions from a short laugh. But you do. "I just...this is fucked, mate," he says, his voice not raised but also not quite steady. "'Cause I don't even know you, but you're finding me like this." You briefly consider walking away. But how could you now? For better, or worse, you're trapped here. In this conversation that you might not be ready for. That he might not be ready for. So, you're both here, and neither of you are ready for what either of you are going to say. But you're still here. [["Like what?"->like what]]

"Like...shit." The stranger lifts his hand and rubs the back of it along his eyes. "This is really embarrasin'. Okay so I just-" He pressed his thighs tighter against the barrier and you take a step forward just in case. "You can talk, man. There's nothing to be embarassed about. I don't know you, you don't know me. We're just two people chatting shit on a bridge." He gives another laugh that he doesn't mean. "It's not shit though. Well, it //is// shit. I just don't even know //why// it's shit. It's like I just woke up ten years ago and my brain's like 'you fucking hate everything and can't experience joy', and then it's just stayed like that." You shift you weight between your feet. What do you even say to that? You're not a doctor, you haven't even studied mental health. You don't know anything. You don't even know his name. "Have you, like, spoken to a doctor?" Another laugh passes his lips, and this is somehow even colder than the last. "I'm fucking fed up of talking to useless doctors, man. Here's some more pills. Maybe in six years we'll have an opening for you to sit in a room and tell some person how sad you are, but until then drink some nice warm milk when you're feeling a bit under the weather. //Under the fucking weather.// You believe that shit, man? Like I have a fucking cold! Like I'm not constantly in this horrible pit of everything I am and just totally drowning." His voice is definitely raised now, but he takes a deep breath and seems to steady himself. "Sorry, man. It's not your fault. Isn't their fault either. My fault." "It's not your fault. Like, I'm not an expert or anything, but mental health is like some chemical shit that people can't help." "I know that, I //do//. But it's still fucked. Feel like I'm just cursed. Like I've done some fucked up thing that I can't remember and I've just..." He shrugs. "It's annoying 'cause there isn't anything. Like, I can't just find something and work on it, cause there's nothing there. I have like, in the grand scheme of everything, a really good life. I have a home and I have people who love me, and sure things could be better with money or whatever, living's expensive," you nod in response, because living is expensive. "But ultimately I've always just thought that as long as I have people there who love me, like obviously love me, then life must be...something. You know?" He turns his head to you, but doesn't wait for your response. "But then every day it just gets harder and harder to ignore this raw, burning feeling in my chest that I wasn't even supposed to be born and my death will just make everything better and right and like it was supposed to be." This time he does pause and wait for you to say something. But you don't know what to say. So you say: [["I don't know what to say,"->what to say]]

He says nothing. And you also say nothing. After a while, you can see the shadow of his lips moving into a thin smile. "Yeah, man. You're right." He sighs, slumping against the barrier like he's been completely deflated. "Sorry about all this. I just...I'm just gonna go home and call it a night. Thanks for listening to me rant." The stranger laughs, but it doesn't sound angry, or bitter, or cold. It doesn't sound like anything. "Have a good night, dude." You know you've been dismissed. but you don't move. You don't move, because he doesn't move. He's still slumped against that railing, looking down at the cold waters below. This river is deep. It leads to the ocean.. [[You can't both stand around saying nothing forever, so you don't. You turn around and walk home.->go home]]

That night you listen out for sirens. You hear some in the distance, but the fact that they're not closer still doesn't soothe you. The morning after you scan local news sites for anything and find nothing. But still the doubt and the guilt and the fear settles like cement in your stomach. Weeks pass and there's still nothing but cement when you think about him. Sometimes you don't think about him at all. You're too busy. You have your own life. You have your own people to make happier. You cultivate every happiness, and hope that he can do the same at some point. But ultimately, you don't really know. Maybe he's at the bottom of a river. Maybe those people who love him are mourning and leaving bouquets at his tombstone. Or maybe he did go home. Maybe he woke up the next day, and the next, and he still feels exactly the same. He still thinks about the bridge. Still has days where he looks down at the water and thinks //finally, finally, this is it//. Who knows? You suppose //he// does. The people he may, or may not, have left behind do. It's okay. It really //is// okay. You have things to do. THE END (text-colour:magenta)[Authors Note: I'm sorry if you got both endings and realised that they're kind of the same ending. I think it makes more sense that way. We can't really do anything, sometimes, no matter how many decisions we do or don't make. And that's horrible. But it's also okay. We're just human. Our lives are so short, and no matter how much we want to we can't do everything we want, or even need, to do. I don't know what this is all about. It's just something that I had in me that I wanted to write down. ] [[Would you like to try again?->Going For a Walk]]