Prologue
Association of commonly felt emotions with the onset of regular life events is probably one of the most extensively made mistakes made by the humans. It’s the whole concept of cause and effect coupled with the immensely nauseating need to correlate every single action and phenomenon. Great minds collectively believe that this is a direct consequence of the intrinsic quality of humans known as curiosity; which, of course, is only a function of sentience. Do you notice the irony in this? This whole concept just proved itself to be right by virtue of its mere existence: great minds felt the need to correlate a phenomenon with a human emotion, i.e. curiosity. It’s like a snake discovering it’s own tail for the first time. But as time flows this discovery just becomes more and more apparent and the snake starts moving up it’s own body. The more it observes the more it realizes that that’s just it: a single body. The only difference in this analogy is that the snake is not sentient, unlike us. And that, probably, is a huge difference. So much so that it doesn’t make sense to use this analogy. Maybe I should’ve used another example. I could’ve used another example, of course, but I was only able to come up with either snakes or ladders or ropes.
Ropes, ladders, snakes.
The ladder was on the floor, in a rather peculiar position as if someone kicked it away. The snakes were on her favorite t-shirt, smiling and hissing little green cartoons. And the rope? Around her neck.
It’s the same concept, you see. Sometimes it comes into play the other way around. The event happens first and then you keep looking through the emotions you felt in the past to correlate and justify all of it. That is the human way to go about it. I, on the other hand, stood at the door admiring her face. When someone is choking, you can see their face turning blue with each passing second. Around the edge of their neck, where the pressure is applied, veins start popping up making a pattern. The face starts puffing up ever so slightly. But this was different, and hence the admiration. The room was lit up in a neon blue light entering from the huge glass balcony door to the left. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t able to see that distinguishing hue of the skin on her face. She was clutching the noose around her neck trying to pull herself up, in the hopes of reducing some of the pressure on her neck. Her eyes, deep brown eyes, were looking straight at me. They were tearing up. Her legs twitched violently looking for solid ground to stand. Sometimes she would remove her hand from the noose and extend it towards me. A gesture, a hope. But that hand would clutch empty air again and again.
It takes a few minutes, getting used to it. Force of habit made me lose ground and I almost ran to save her. But her hope was stronger. I was watching her die, as she had asked me to. I was waiting at the door, as she had asked me to. I was wearing her favorite black suit, as she had asked me to. I was carrying the rings in my pocket, as she had asked me to.
I didn’t shut my eyes. I was waiting for her.
She stopped moving.
“Are you done, honey?” I asked.
Yes, my love. I framed a reply in my head. “You… look lovely as alwa…” and I choked in the middle as I noticed the tears rolling down my cheeks.
Maybe I knew from the face that rested on the noose. It was no longer focused at me. The eyes seemed to be looking into an abyss right next to my shoulder. The woman I loved was dead, finally I took a shaky breath.
All the strength, respect and love that was holding me straight, while she gasped for her last few breaths, shattered as if they fell down. My knees buckled and I joined that heap of feelings on the floor. She was dead, maybe now I could move my eyes away from what was swinging from the ceiling fan. But I didn’t. As the tears blurred my vision further, I took a deep breath and let out a howl that could wake the gods in the heavens and send her back to me. If only they could.
“Are you done, honey?” I screamed at the body. “Yes, my love?” I howled a response that was meant to question what just happened.
I must’ve screamed for an hour before the police crashed in through the door and held me. Apparently the neighbors were so used to the screams, that they didn’t call emergency until half an hour had passed. But by now I think the concept justifies what they did. Correlation. The snake had lost interest in the same observation.
Events and emotions don’t have a cause and effect relation. They have a codependency. Neither of them can exist without the other. You need an event to trigger an emotion, and you need an emotion to justify an event. Seems to be a sound logic. Although, what I’m about to do may seem a bit contradictory to this logic. What emotion has lead me here, ready to jump? If I hit the pavement, what emotion will you choose to justify that?
The wind is howling in my ears. I suppose some things will be similar in both of our deaths. Though I must say, I have the better view. I love the New York skyline at this hour. I will regret only this contradiction.
You have to move on, and so do I…
Just one step…
