cigarette daydreams

There was a woman last summer who walked into the ocean to try to take her own life. Of course, I didn’t realize this, and when I saw her begin to drown I jumped in to save her. As I brought her up from the floor of the ocean, I noticed her whole body was limp—she was fully prepared to die, and her body was no longer hers. When we finally reached the shore, she told me what she had been trying to do, and that I was only drawing out the inevitable. A week later, I saw on the news that she had jumped in front of a train. Oh, what pain! It was clearly one that had consumed her for years, something out of her control that had infected every part of her being. She had wanted to die on that beach, and who was I to stop her? Who was I to play God? Some of us find freedom in life, but she found freedom in death. All I did was prolong her unhappiness, and I think about it every day.

looking for the answers in the pouring rain