Loving November Grace

1

November's Point of View

Night shrouded the boulders from view, only their jagged tips visible over the pounding waves below.

I wrapped my arms around my body, fighting against the wind as I staggered up to the edge gazing down and out over the dark waters.

Wild, uncontrollable, all- consuming.

I rubbed my icy hands over my face, my thoughts felt like they were bleeding out of me, spinning out of control. A perfect mirror to the swirling waves below me.

Would it be painful I wondered, to jump? To feel my bones crash against the rocks?

No more painful, surely, than not to jump.

The sky was a dark violet overhead, sequinned with stars yet I could see no beauty in their everlasting patchwork. Not tonight.

The clouds however, dark, powerful, chaotic, were something I could relate to. A destructive force- that's how I felt right now. 

I was being beyond destructive, my mind open, like it had burst.

The wind was hitting me straight on, my coat whipped out behind me, and I felt what it was like to stand there completely exposed to the elements. My oversized t-shirt, doing nothing to protect me from feeling the icy cold assault me.

I stepped closer to the edge and a laugh fell between my lips, not audible over the outside chaos. 

My body hummed with excitement as my toes felt the edge of the cliff. 

It would be so fucking easy to just 'slip'. Or to just fuck it, and dive. And that felt so good. 

Was this what it was to feel alive? Being this close to death? Do I want to die?

The answer is yes. 

I sat, my legs dangling, scratching against the rock. What was it, 100 meters down? More? I'd definitely not survive.  And well, there's a storm, nobody would even need to know what happened. 

I'd be washed away by morning.

I wanted to jump. 

I did.

But I chose no.

A YEAR LATER AND SIXTH MONTHS LATER

"Do you know what made you come back from the edge?" My middle aged nearly balding counsellor Tristan asked me for the a hundredth time since we started these sessions. He asks this question all the time, my answer doesn't change.

"I told you, I didn't want to die, it would have hurt more people than-" I start and Tristan shakes his head at me.

I always laugh when I think of his name, because for some reason I know that the Celtic name Tristan has a few meanings and one of them is 'sorrowful' or 'sad'.

Which I think is hugely ironic seeing as he specialises in helping teenagers who are too sad to live. He wants us to be happy, but his name is symbolic of sadness.

But to be fair, when I think of my therapist, I don't associate him with sadness, when my social worker says his name the only feeling that arises is frustration.

"So why were you up there in the first place?" He asks the same questions at the end of every session, as if there is something about my suicide attempt that I didn't understand.

It's funny because it's like he forgets that we're talking about me, it's like he wants to tackle this as if I'm looking in on myself from the outside.