Having nothing to lose is the best feeling in the world.
This whole wide world sucks. The people aren’t helping to make it one bit better.
Take the undisciplined, the carefree. They never had any sense of the greater good. Of sacrifice. Of being a man for others. I am so tired. I am so tired of having to work my ass off and then see everyone else being so unproductive. I’m tired of taking initiative. No one else delivers anyway.
But they get away with it.
Take the rich, the powerful. They’ve got it all in their hands. They have false hopes and ambitions, and mask the selfishness with false acts of charity. They know the greater good, and use it to mask what they’re actually doing, which is not doing anything, for they fear straining even the smallest of implanted facial tissue. Of course they’re happy there. High up on the thrones they believe themselves to be sitting on. The poor kills themselves to be just like them. When they do, they forget everything to become the dictators themselves.
And of course they get away with it.
It doesn’t matter now. Yesterday I realized that nothing would change if I was gone. Why does the rest of the world have to matter?
I don’t matter anyway.
Nothing will change.
She comes along… Calls herself Tita Meldy—to maintain the illusion of youth, of course; she should’ve been called Lola Meldy. Dolls herself up like it was fifty years yesterday. For a few seconds I found myself stopping in the middle of the Katipunan overpass, looking down at the cars doing no less than seventy. Everything was light. I could feel myself smiling, enjoying that height, and somewhere in the back of my head, an imagined flight.
I get a tap on my shoulder.
It is she, dressed unsurprisingly in regal Filipiniana. I see men in dark suits a few meters away, right by the steps. I had no intention of patronizing her. It was two in the morning. No one else was around. I shifted back to view the avenue’s stretch, as though I hadn’t seen anything.
She moves closer and we stand side by side, both holding the edge of the concrete and looking out.
“You know,” she began, in a motherly yet derogatory manner. “There’s only one reason why you would jump.”
I kept silent. I hated adults who loved to act like know-it-alls. A false sense of wisdom put there by age. Selfish, narrow-minded adults. Especially those who collect shoes like there was no tomorrow.
“You don’t hate the world as much as you hate yourself for what you did.”
Air temperature dropped at least ten degrees—Celsius. Body temperature rose.
“I know how you feel… Like you deserved it… But you’ve also believed long ago everyone will get by with enough hard work. Do you want to lose that? I sought you out precisely because of it.”
I picked up my bag lying at my feet, and started to head for the steps on the other side.
From the corner of my eye the men started to run, but she signaled them not to pursue me. I most nearly stumbled on every step down… Then I ran straight ahead, as fast as my feet could take me.
Someone knows.
I might as well be doing something about it.
Or die trying.