Grey ashes stain the skin of my thighs. I mutter a curse word at Caleb’s direction before dusting it off. He takes another long drag. It reeks of menthol and dead leaves. I ******* hate cigarettes. And most people I knew who smoked were as toxic and temporary as the object of their vice. It seemed everyone I love fancied smoking their lungs out and I had always been treated like another stick burning too close to the filter. Over time I had mastered the art of secretly holding my breath whenever they were all trying to burn their anguish. Now I feel like I’d asphyxiate to death if I try to avoid breathing in his exhaust. Sixteen year old me would have already pushed him to his demise just for the mere act of lighting a cigarette in front of me but three years had passed, and though it might not have happened in a rather drastic way as we retained our nihilism and self-righteousness, we had changed. I have my tamed my repulsion towards what I like to deem as a foible of a majority of people, and he went from being a quiet, well-behaved, clean-cut charmer to this womanizing edgelord ******. We were sitting on the same ledge we often sat on as high schoolers, contemplating whether jumping off would guarantee our death more compared to downing a dozen pads of Panadol but quickly realizing we didn’t want to die in this economy, with this **** administration slowly extinguishing half of our population as how those corrupt fascist rulers from that book he liked basically created the plague that caused mass genocide in third world countries. These days, we rarely talk about dying or fighting the oppressive beliefs we’ve been taught to perpetuate since birth. I find myself mentally counting all the times I’ve said to my father that I loved him as Caleb drones on about the girl I saw leaving his apartment this morning when I came to return a book I borrowed. This punk claims she was cute but kept on contradicting herself, says he met her when he reluctantly went with his guy friend to their church.

      “ She kept on preaching me about hell and mortal sins just last week but I figure that after last night the big guy upstairs wouldn’t be too sure about her salvation either,noh?”I rolled my eyes at him. I miss nice, good-mannered, geeky and gentlemanly Caleb. The emotional barricades and sarcastic comebacks had always been part of his package but he’s always been wary about hurting people unintentionally whether it was direct or passive. I don’t know how someone who still orders the same fruit drink whenever he eats out, who still likes the same bands, who still reads the same genre of manga and weird Russian novels, who still watches the same crime shows and anime could have changed in a way I can’t fully grasp. I comfort myself with the thought that he is just a boy after all, a boy with a tendency to be a ****** *******. “ Cut the bull, Caleb, I know you could care less about the religious ramblings of the poor *****. You got what you wanted, didn’t you? She got you off so let her have the same benefit through preaching . For someone who ****** around, you’re **** at people who are doing your libido a favor.”
       It’s a weak argument. With a face like his, he doesn’t even need to ask anyone to be with him. Girls have always been flocking to him. Weird thing is that women seem to like this downgraded version of him more. Ugh. When you’re as pretty and as interesting as him, life can be **** at times but at least you can pretend to be a lead in an indie coming-of-age movie as The Smiths play in the background.

“Wow. I never took you for a defender of their faith. Are you a believer too? Chill. You know that I was just kidding.”

“I’m just saying, even if we don’t share the same beliefs as them or if we have none, that’s no reason to say mean things about them.”

“ I didn’t mean it like that naman, eh. Lighten up. You know I am a good old Catholic boy, why, I even got my forehead drawn on during Ash Wednesday.”

“ Yeah, right and I’ve been singing in choir for a decade and collecting alms from the pews. You are a disgrace to your Church.”, I scoffed in reply. He just laughs and gets up to throw his cigarette **** in the silver trash bin he always had in his car. After lifting himself up, he motions for me to join him on the roof. I stand up from the rock I was sitting on and follow him.

“ I think we’re going to hell”, he jokes as he took my left foot to remove my sneaker. He snatches the other pair from my hands and crouches down to reach inside the driver’s seat where he puts both of our shoes.

“ Isn’t it unfair how we could be thrown into the pits of a burning void when there’s not even someone up there to judge us?”

“ Maybe there is but we’re just ******* who’d rather rely on the theories of our favorite philosophers for meaning because it’s terrifying to accept the futility of our existence as it was given to us by the big Guy upstairs.”

“ That’s just you. I don’t know if I believe in Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, nor God Himself. It’s all just bleh.”

“ Well, if you don’t believe in science or nihilism or God, then there must be something you believe in.”

       I almost laughed —not at him, but how pathetic my answer would be. I almost told him that the last thing I believed in threw me away like trash and shattered what little love I had left for myself. I almost answered him, half-crying, half-laughing that even if I didn’t have any of it to keep me on my feet, I used to believe that love could somehow hold all of us together; that a dysfunctional family is still a family as long as a parent loves their child enough, that even a bully can be a friend if you keep forgiving and trying for their sake, that it’s okay to tread through eggshells and landmines as long as the person who’s led you there is holding your hand. And I thought I stopped believing in fairy tales at nine years old. I knew I wouldn’t be able to crawl out of this rabbit hole for months to end if I let myself slip again this time with my emotions. So I keep my pathetic thoughts to myself and avoid his gaze.

       It’s late and I’m pretty sure back in the city, the person I used to believe in, the person who made the thought of smoking more unbearable to I, the person who’s the reason why I’m on this ledge again is probably either sleeping or talking to another girl.  A pretty China doll with delicate features, a shy demeanor, and an eloquence for the things he likes. Maybe he’s kissing her and for the first time, he wouldn’t taste like the last girl he loved. Maybe he’s fumbling for her zipper while I’m here trying to grasp how cold and unbearable was the truth he gave me about my worth as a person. Maybe he’s stalking that girl he always had a crush on since high school. Maybe tonight he’d die. Suddenly. Horribly. Maybe he’d disappear and everything would disappear with him. Maybe I would try smoking too just to spite him or I could stop pricking my throat with my index finger every time I feel I’ve consumed an amount intended for a human when I know I have to be a porcelain toy. Maybe I could stop measuring my wrists because like my thighs, like my stomach, like my heart, it takes too ******* long for them to finally shrink into the size that’s most convenient for everyone to love. I should probably stop cutting too— even if it is only in places they cannot see— no one likes a scarred ****** up excuse of  a girl after all. Maybe I could stop thinking that there is something horribly wrong with myself and I could pray for forgiveness for it to a being I don’t fully believe in. If I could just try, if I could try harder, if I could try to force my worn out spirit to try again, a lot of these possibilities might be achieved instead of just being another list in my head. I tell myself that maybe tomorrow, when I’m not twenty feet above ground and when dying isn’t the only thing on my mind, I could try but for now I’ll do my best not to jump.

        The night sky is so stretched out and I’ve never seen it as bright as it is tonight, because I’ve stopped looking at it for a long time and I’ve forgotten how all- consuming the feeling of so is, I finally concede and cry. I think about God and the universe and all those dead men that tried to explain the void that’s been within all of us ever since we were born. How Kierkegaard died slumped at an alley, probably drunk out of his mind. How Cobain refused to go on. Maybe I don’t entirely believe in the existence of Almighty beings and maybe I also refuse to accept that life is pointless but at the very least, I want to believe that this reality is never still meaning that even if I quit my existence, the world will go on without me. In that context, none of us truly matter all on our own in this world. It helps to know that we’re all part of something so much bigger than our feeble emotions, that the Universe is one big organism that contains us yet at the same time is inside us, that we are nothing but systems that modulate and emulate themselves for themselves. It’s comforting to be small and insignificant as a speck of dust in this world as it suggests this pain that’s been tearing at your soul for what seemed like centuries now is a force that can’t survive in the slow descent of mankind into oblivion. It is a mere pulse in the system. It is fleeting and will one day no longer hold this power over you. Or so I believe.

       It dawns unto me I still haven’t answered his question but I figured he already took my silence for an indefinite answer as he turned his gaze to look ahead instead of at me. I do the same and soldier on.

-W.