I met the love of my life on a rooftop. I wasn’t jumping. That wasn’t the plan in my mind when I climbed the ladder I found in the random hallway of the random building to get up there. I’m not really sure how I ended up there. I was drunk, which is something I am pretty often. Not enough to be considered a habit, but definitely a commonality.

It was one of those fate choices you have. You know when you’re walking down a hallway and you see a door or another hallway and you think to yourself, I should walk down there. I should take this road that leads to somewhere I don’t know. There is no reason for the choice. It is always in the moment, and you only ever have a second to choose. You see the option, and you either follow the plan or your heart. Most of the time when you follow your heart nothing happens. You walk down the hallway or drive down the road and nothing happens.

Life continues.

And then you have to think to yourself, was it fate? Would something bad have happened if I stayed on the original path? Would I still be walking, talking, living if I kept on in the direction I was going?

I don’t know the answer. I never have. I probably never will. I don’t like thinking about fate much. To quote one awesome character in an awesome film franchise, “I don’t like the idea of not being in control of my own life.” At least I think that’s what he says. If you don’t know who says it, figure it out.

Regardless of fate, beer, or none of the above or maybe all of the above I walked through a door, down a hall, through another door, up some stairs, and more stairs, and more stairs, down another hall, up a ladder, and through one last door to end up on the roof of the random building. I had never been on a roof other than when I would sit on the one of the house I grew up in or in the apartment I lived in my first year of college.

I was alone.

My friends had left earlier in the night which is something I was not happy about, and I started walking. A girl in a little dress walking alone in a city at night.

I never claimed to be smart.

I mean I am smart. I’m very smart when I want to be. As my mom says, I have lapses in judgement that lead me to circumstances such as the one I found myself in that night.

On a roof. Standing at the edge. Looking over. And wondering what it would be like to end it. To end it all. There would be people to miss me. A few of them would be sincere about it, and a lot of them would pretend to care. I know there would be so many people there claiming to be my friends even though they hadn’t been in my life for years. They were at one point though. At one time they were in the center of my life. Of my existence. I guess that gives them a right to have a sort of claim on me, because the time they were in my life helped to shape me. I wouldn’t be me without that time. So maybe they aren’t completely full of shit, because I’d like to think that that would work both ways.

Anyway back to being on the roof. Contemplating death. And he shows up.

At the time I did not know he was going to be the love of my life up until that point, which really isn’t saying much. That kind of makes it seem pathetic in a way. He was my great love. My first love. My first taste of what happiness could be. What it could look like.

Like I said, at the time I wasn’t thinking any of these things. I was thinking that he was ruining my perfect seclusion. He was ruining my new found spot. He was intruding in my internal dialogue of life versus death.

I’ll admit when I turned around to look at him I was happy with the view, but at that point in my drunken rage against my asshole friends I was in no mood to be kind. And he didn’t mind. I think he actually liked it.

“Don’t do it,” he said from behind me as I gazed at the bushes a few stories below me. Far enough to break the fall, but too far to keep me alive.

“Go away Jack,” was my answer. I didn’t think he would catch my Titanic reference, but I heard the soft chuckle behind me.

“Come on Rose. Step off the ledge.” He didn’t sound serious. His voice sounded like I should be waiting for the punchline of a joke.

“I’m not jumping. Just thinking about what it would be like if I did.” I’m not entirely sure if he believed me, but I heard his footsteps come closer and then saw the toes of his beaten up converse on the ledge next to me. I should’ve flinched when I heard him coming towards me. Now I know that. At the time I didn’t even think about it.

“You think it would hurt?” he asked. I could see his dark jeans, dark t-shirt, and dark hair out of my peripheral vision.

“Probably, but by that point maybe it would be over before the pain really kicked in.”

I’m not sure what rooftop it was. I know it was on a campus of the college down the street. I know that the sky was clear and the air had one of those beautiful summer breezes that can give you goosebumps and warm you all at the same time. I guess that’s how he made me feel too. Not at that time though.

I truly don’t even know if he was the love of my life. He was a love. A great love. A beautiful and perfect love, whose only fault was ending. At that time I knew none of this. At the time I was standing on a roof with a man who wore converse more beat up than my own. I didn’t know how many books he had read, or how smart he could be when he chose to be. I didn’t know how in tune he would become with my every movement. I didn’t know that I would grow to love him. Grow to hate him. Grow to need him.

I didn’t know that eventually I would lose him.

All I knew was that I was standing on a roof, I was drunk, a man was standing next to me, and we were talking about what it would be like to jump.

“By that point you would be nothing.”

“Nothing but a memory.”

“Someone else’s memory.”

@C. O’Connor, 2018