A while ago my friends paid a visit to my flat. They sat on the sofa and looked over to the mountain view right outside our balcony. One of them exclaimed to me how wonderful it was to live right opposite the vastness of green when most of the people in modern life were trying to just get away from their regular 9 to 5 routine for just a few minutes. I said to him, "If you stand further away from the balcony window, the mountain will seem bigger, like you can brush against the seemingly spurious scenery painting within the reach of your hand. It is as if you could just jump out of the window frames and touch the birds near the upper rim of the artwork as you free-fall and land on the greenish mattress."
It was the same balcony my sister had tried to jump out of, only wishing to land on the Monday midnight concrete twenty-nine storeys below. It was the same night a nightingale's lament woke me from my sound sleep. As exhausted as I could ever be, my dreams pulled me back into heavy snoring again. The next morning my alarm went off and when I got out of bed, there was the black-and-blue little bird curling up in the lower bunk beneath the bed sheets, flightless, weeping. She said she wanted to do it, but she couldn't.
My sister tried to kill herself last night.
If the best storytellers were those who're the most honest, I would be the worst one to ever tell you that I had never contemplated what my sister contemplated.
Our neighbor, we used to call her Charlie, had three dogs when her family still lived next to mine. They moved two years later to a place about an hour bus ride away. By the time I called her up to meet again, she already had six dogs in total. Her family was the breeders, so they didn't bring it to the vet when it was in labor. Charlie told me it was at night the dog was having dystocia when it was giving birth to its last pup. With blood on the tiles, it delivered, survived, and Charlie's mother cried till the morning.
My sister tried to kill herself last night.
When I was in third or fourth grade, my grandmother came home with a yellow canary in a cage. It was chirping in the playground downstairs, she said. It was chirping while other swallows kept quiet. It didn't try to escape when my grandma approached. So she kept it ever since. She fed it and took care if it. The bird was all my grandma would talk about to all her friends. Old men would bring their birds to the parks and hang out with other old men. It wasn't something an old lady would do, so every once in a while we would bring the tiny music player with us to family field trips. I have to admit that those were one of the best days of my life. The canary always attracted children to come near and listen to its cool chirps. My grandma was proud of it. In fact we all were. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. It was hope and joy and laughter. Then one day when my gran tried to clean the cage, it flew away. Those were the bad days in my childhood because I could tell that everyone at home was a bit bothered by the news. The cage was kept open on gran's balcony for quite a few days. One morning she was woken to a unique chirp. A yellow little angel was standing on the balcony. It came back. Eventually the bird grew old and died. But it was something I could never forget because this little creature was freedom looking for haven. It was a vagrant longing for home.
My sister tried to kill herself last night.
The next morning she was sitting on the yellow marble bathroom floor, both her wrists covered with self-loathing from the night before, she begged me to let her go, with her face behind her palms. She said in an almost inaudible husky voice, "I'm not meant for this, I don't belong here." I told her about love and loss and fear, but she cleared her throat and said to me firmly, "I don't want anything anymore." I stood up and turned away as I tried to look at her reflection in the mirror. But all I saw was my own reflection now and I saw myself sitting on the bathroom floor with hands over my face two years ago. And I get it now. I finally get it. To always pick the harder road but not the one that is the easiest. I understand now. To always fight and never quit. To struggle and finally see. To get lost and keep finding your way back. Mind over matter. Life over death.
My sister tried to kill herself last night, and I know I've said it a million times now. But the birds don't just die over the Winter and when I say, life is beautiful and worth living for, my words - these words - do not come out as an apology.
