Author: McKayla Girardin

It’s hard to find yourself on your own. Rarely is it the touchingly-melancholic coming-of-age journey that Hollywood portrays. Most often, it’s a violent and painful childbirth that lasts months or even years. At times, the labor may slow or stop, and you find yourself thinking Wow, it happened: Finally. I’m so excited to go enjoy my life as a fully formed and healed human. Then, nearly as soon as it stopped, as if to reassure you the universe is absolutely never on your side, the labor begins again, ten fold, and the cycle repeats.

I guess what I’m trying to say is sometimes, you’ve got to look yourself in the mirror and congratulate yourself for not trying to commit suicide that day. Unfortunately for me, today is not one of those days. 

I really thought dying would be easier. I guess I always believed humans are relatively fragile things. So, when I decided to try to end it all, I did it in a very typical-for-me dramatic fashion that I was certain would seal the deal: by taking a handful of hydrocodone and falling from the roof of a 5 floor walk up in Brooklyn.

But I didn’t do it because some great tragedy occurred. I had no lost love I yearned to return to, nor some wrong my lack of existence would right. I did it because I stopped believing in magic. And yeah, I know how silly that sounds, but from the earliest age I can remember, I believed so fully that magic must exist. It became a religion to me of sorts, as if finding the proof would make the universe and existence make sense, give it purpose, provide real reason to it all. This search for proof quickly evolved into my only reason for getting out of bed each morning. I was convinced that one of these days, I’d turn a corner and see the last dying glimmering shimmers of something magical occurring, that I’d step on just the right spot on the sidewalk and feel the soft warm twinkle of electricity rise through my bones, that I’d wake up one morning to the sky being just the wrong shade of blue and catch a glimpse of someone repainting it from what they believed to be the privacy of an early morning rooftop. 

But as I grew up, life methodically and systematically wretched every piece of hope in this belief from my bare hands. I was holding on to scraps of it, trying to push through each day, do my job, pay my bills, swipe on dating apps, have boring and normal conversations with my boring and normal friends. 

The more hope that I lost, the more a deep and unsettling loneliness crept into me. It wasn’t something any human or animal could solve. It wasn’t something therapy would fix. It was just a hole where hope used to live — where magic used to live.  

I tried so many things before coming to my ultimate and final conclusion: I tried drugs, drinking, sex, art, music, film. I tried exercise, meditation, medication, and distraction. I tried religions, plural, and books and self-help tapes and hair dye. Nothing worked. With each day, the emptiness grew. The feeling of being fully alone in a vast expanse of nothing grew so big that I couldn’t move. How can anyone move when it seems like a light-year separates you from the front door, like a hundred years of walking is keeping you from the outside world? 

Admittedly, though, it wasn’t all on purpose.

I remember it was raining. That’s the only reason I went up to the roof in the first place: I could hear the soft patter of spring rain on the fire escape growing into a deeper, darker, wilder thunderstorm and, having already taken the pills, the desire to see the magic of lightning dance across the New York City skyline one last time was gnawing at the base of my skull like a bad migraine. So, I grabbed my raincoat, tossed some cheap, $5 slides from Target on, and climbed out on the fire escape. 

The wind was thrashing the side of the building, but, if anything, I think that was keeping me glued to the ladder more securely. It wasn’t until I got to the top rung and put my hand in a small pile of bird shit that things turned bad. I ripped my hand back, because who wouldn’t? This was supposed to be a magical moment: slowly fading into the void with the backdrop of lightning, skyscrapers, and wild wind. But now, my hand was covered in a smelly, wet, white goo. Unfortunately, in my state, I may have ripped my hand away a little more aggressively than I intended. I did say I could be dramatic at times. What did you expect, the pills lessened that?

Well, then I was falling, and I hate the feeling of falling. So, in the moment, there were some regrets about this whole decision, sure, but only in the sense that my original plan was perfect and this, well…it just wasn’t. I swear I ran through every stage of grief in that fall, cursing the bird that had the audacity to shit on the ladder, cursing myself for changing the plan. I thought maybe I had already died and this was my eternal hell. I started spiraling through how ridiculous everyone would find this, how my whole big dramatic end would become a sad and silly story instead of the beautiful climactic tragedy I hoped for. But, finally, as the ground came up below me, I figured this gave me the final result I wanted anyways and accepted my fate.

However, waking up a few hours later in a hospital was an entirely unexpected result. I blinked hard against the harsh fluorescents trying to bring the off-white drop-tile ceiling into focus. As my eyes adjusted, I saw something even less expected than waking up in general: in the corner of the tile directly above me, the top right corner, I bore witness to a faint shimmering glitter, as if something magical had just occurred, as if I’d just missed it.

I went to rub my eyes, but when I reopened them, the faint shimmer on the ceiling tile was gone, and I was torn between belief and denial. I sighed heavily and let my head fall back into the pillow. Neither choice seemed ideal at the moment. I kept staring at the spot, willing it to return, to tell me if I was going insane or not.

A rough knock at the door startled me from my staring contest with the ceiling.

“Lavinia Moscatelli?”

I coughed out a weak yes, suddenly realizing how dry my throat and mouth were.

“Had quite a fall, huh?” said the doctor, staring intently at a computer screen on a rolling-standing desk while walking into the room. He didn’t wait for me to respond. “Well, you got immeasurably lucky,” he said, looking up from the screen. “Nothing is seriously broken. You’ve definitely got a fractured rib, and some pretty serious bruising, a mild concussion, but, somehow, despite all odds, you could quite literally walk away from this accident without any real issues.”

I glanced down at the IV in my arm, unsure how to respond.

“My best guess would be that something happened similar to the way drunk drivers often survive when they crash into another car, but the other driver typically suffers serious injury or death.”

“Uh…” I was confused by this sudden change in topic. 

“Well, drunk drivers don’t brace themselves against the crash. They don’t tense up. Sometimes, they may not even know the impact is coming. The alcohol acts as a muscle relaxer, subdues their anxiety, and slows their reaction times, so their body responds to the crash more fluidly, sometimes preventing certain types of injuries.”

“…Okay,” I said, as he paused, looking at me expectantly.

“It’s a similar theory here. You took enough drugs that your body just responded more fluidly to the fall, I guess. You didn’t tense up or really react to the impact at all,” he clasped his hands together. “So, it likely prevented some of the injuries.” 

“Oh,” I replied, looking first at him, then at the blanket over my legs. “I see, I guess.”  

“Look, I’ll level with you,” he sighed, pushing the rolling computer to the side and sitting down on a rolling stool near the bed. “I think it’s pretty obvious that this was a suicide attempt… People don’t accidentally eat a bottle of pain meds and fall off roofs.” He looked into my eyes like he was searching for something, so I turned my eyes down. “Most people who die for seven minutes come out of it regretting making an attempt. They say they never intended to kill themselves, that it was all a misunderstanding, they didn’t mean it, whatever.”

“…seven minutes?” I asked, briefly making eye contact with him before looking away, trying to avoid the doctor’s uncomfortably earnest stare.

If the sincerity wafting off this doctor like a bad cologne wasn’t bad enough, I suddenly heard a sound from down the hall, the last sound I wanted to hear right now: my mother’s voice.

My 65-year-old born-and-raised-in-Queens mother, who’d barely left the borough a dozen times in her life – I’m sure you can imagine the type – was clicking her way down the hall in Canal Street-bought Jimmy Choo heels, aggressively asking every orderly and nurses aid where her “little stellina” is being held.  

My mother’s the type where she sees her life as a never ending string of personally offensive tragedies. So, I could be certain my “accident” would inevitably be turned into something I did on purpose to try and ruin her life.

She pushed her way into the room, past the doctor, and began babbling a string of Italian-American terms of endearment and concern between pointed questions at the doctor about whether I’d be okay, how badly I had been hurt, who did this to me, and when I’d be able to go home, never giving the doctor a moment to respond. 

“I’m fine, ma, really,” I said, holding my hand up to keep her from getting too close. I could feel my head beginning to spin with the overwhelming nature of her arrival. “He said it’s just a broken rib and a light concussion. I’m going to be okay.” 

“Oh stellina, how did this happen? Why? Did someone do this to you?” Please don’t be fooled by her performance, she is more concerned about what the neighbors will say about this than my actual injuries. 

“I’ll give you guys some space. We’ll probably be able to discharge you within a few hours. I’ll be around later to check-in before you leave, though,” the doctor said quickly, backing out of the room with his rolling computer-desk. 

And then the real worries of my mother came spilling out. She cried, pulling tissue after tissue out of her knock-off Coach purse, about how she must have been the most terrible mother for me to have decided to do something like this. She ranted about how she always tried her best but it was clearly not enough. She called upon God, Jesus, the Holy Father, and the Pope to explain to her what she did so wrong in her life to deserve a trial like this. I’ll spare you the details, mostly because I’d learned long ago to stop listening when she gets like this and wait out the storm. 

I can’t say for certain how long she went on, but my relief when a nurse finally walked in was immeasurable. After a series of vitals tests, bland hospital food, and several medications for my broken rib and (not-accident-related) headache, the doctor returned and I was discharged. I fought in the parking lot with my mother for a solid twenty minutes — she insisted I go to her apartment, I refused. Finally, she caved when I promised to call her in the morning. She drove me home and I stood in the entryway of my apartment trying to process everything. 

The pill bottle was still on my coffee table besides a bottle of Four Roses Bourbon and a few empty cans of Goslings Ginger Beer. The lights were left on, plates from the dinner last night sat on the counter in a haphazard pile. I put the bag of random belongings from the hospital down on the table and collapsed on the couch, the stress from all the things I’d need to do and clean before returning to work tomorrow beginning to ball into a heavy weight on my chest and the reasons for my “accident” reforming in my head. I closed my eyes against the lights of my living room and suddenly remembered what I saw on the ceiling at the hospital. 

I shot up, likely too fast for my condition as the sharp pain on the side of my torso reminded me, and began to tear apart my house looking for any signs, any shimmers, any faint-glimmers or hints, anything that would validate what I believed I saw. I ripped everything from the closets, scanning the corners. I opened every cabinet, upturned every drawer, moved every piece of furniture. I was certain I would find something, anything, that would give me a sign I wasn’t imagining things. 

There was nothing.    

 Sitting on the floor, you’d think I’d realize I must have just imagined it, that it must have been something in my eye or a trick of light or even a weird manifestation from falling five stories. I didn’t. As I slowly began to put everything back to normal in my apartment, I decided that I must have simply missed it or looked in the wrong place at the wrong time. The belief inside me that I’d see it again was so resolute, filling that hole where hope used to live. 

And for weeks, I felt alive again. I woke up early, I took long and wandering routes to work every day, scanning every window, doorway, rooftop, and gutter with my eyes. I went out, I met up with friends, I spent weekends going to random subway stops and walking for hours, knowing that any moment I’d see something — I’d see some last dying glittering shimmers of something magical occurring. 

But there was nothing. 

Six months after my accident, I’d started therapy and was trying to move on. Since the first attempt to remove myself from society didn’t work, I stopped seeing a real need to try again. Instead, I resigned myself to the fact that life is a disappointment and the only thing to do is search for small moments of joy when they come. I let the hole where hope used to live reopen and lived inside it, distracting myself with work and friends and social media, trying to find a way to feel okay with being a shell. 

For the most part, it worked. 

One fall Sunday, seven months to the day after I unceremoniously fell out of the sky, I was having a normal day, walking back home from a coffee shop with a bagel and coffee, sidestepping puddles on the cold November sidewalks. Although I had stopped the meandering walks a few months back, something about the mild air and open schedule of the day inspired me. Instead of turning right on Myrtle Ave, I turned left and began to wander down random blocks. I wasn’t searching for anything anymore, though. This time, I was simply walking, forcing myself to find enjoyment in the exercise and sights, the couples with strollers, the dog-walkers, the fire-escape gardens Brooklynites built to stave off the terror of concrete and steel. As I slowly made my way back home, I felt for the first time like things might actually be okay, that this hole where hope used to live was manageable, and that perhaps the magic in the world was something more banal, like having a free Sunday afternoon in November to stroll through the streets of Brooklyn. 

As I rounded the corner to my apartment, all my thinking collapsed, I dropped my coffee to the ground, spilling hot liquid on my shoes and pants, and I stopped breathing entirely. There, in front of the door to my apartment building, on the grimy city sidewalk, next to a puddle of old rain, and dirt, and spit, and cigarette butts, I saw it: the last dying glimmering shimmers of something magical having just occurred, but me too late to witness it.