The other day, last week, or perhaps years ago. It seems like yesterday; it doesn’t matter when. Perhaps I was nineteen or even twenty; age is just a number they say. I was in love with a girl, a woman, deeply in love. I don’t know if she loved me. If love were to be measured on a seesaw my feet would be floating on air and hers firmly on the ground. Does love actually weigh anything? Sometimes it feels heavy. What is the opposite of weight?

At that time: I would have been asking can anyone love me? Am I unlovable? Now I would ask: can anyone love another, until they love themselves? Which is strange since I have just professed my love for her and yet was unable, at that time, to love myself. It wasn’t my fault; I was broken. Broken in a way that I would not know about for another year. 

Young love, in my experience, rarely lasts and inevitably after thirteen intense non-consecutive weekends, our relationship broke up. She moved house and changed her telephone number. I had no way of contacting her. Living in different cities; we would not bump into each other. A clean break. A clean physical break. Snap like a bone. Two separate pieces and a lot of pain. I thought I needed her and the fact that she did not need me hurt all the more. I think I was going to kill myself; tablets and a cheap bottle of whisky. Strange isn’t it; think of saving money even as you are planning your own demise. Lack of commitment or was it an attitude inherited from my parent's post-war values? Perhaps I would have failed; just so I could say: I can’t do anything right. Heard in a film or read in a book; I don’t recall? I know it could not be my original thought. I know I don’t have those how could I? The human race has been having thoughts for 300,000 years; I never had a chance.

I am the sort of person who likes to keep his feet on the ground and although I had been abroad. I went by ferry, fuelled by schnaps, me not the boat. Maybe I had drunk a lot on that day, I don’t know, it is said to numb you and it is that I was seeking. Sleep had been difficult to come by; yet all I desired.

It was that day I died.

On a plane with my devoted, we were alone, pilot gone. Knowing the plane would crash I handed over the only parachute. ‘I need you to have this,’ I said.

She didn’t argue, I didn’t want her to. To make a selfless decision is easy; sticking to it there’s the challenge.

‘We’ll step out together,’ I suggested, ‘it’ll be easy.’ So, hand in hand, we jumped. Of course, I landed first, a thump I didn’t hear.

As she floated earthward; my form drifted skyward, departing my broken body. I didn’t look down, my eyes only on her. On her front a reserve chute. In case the first failed, I wondered?

‘Why?’ The words drifted away along with my spirit, on the gentle breeze. Breaking up, defusing, never to be heard; by any living soul...

It is a moment like that, you remember forever. It changes you; in ways that you never even knew you needed. You move forward anew; until the next time.