Unsafe

WARNING: This story contains elements regarding suicide.

I step off the edge.

This has been in my head for a while now. I got this job five weeks ago, second-shift security for a downtown bank building. Seventeen floors, mostly law firms and accounting firms, with a large bank on the ground floor and lots of small business offices in between. I knew, on orientation day, when the first-shift officer was training me, that I would be taking this final step eventually. He showed me the top floor suite, the area where the building engineers had their offices and the building held storage rental spaces and cages for some of the bigger firms in the building. He showed me the important equipment, the various systems, and then the staircase. The secret staircase that only the engineers had access to. The staircase that led to the rooftop.

Week one here, the building manager called my desk. Some university photography students had cut a deal with him to let them go to the rooftop and take sunset pictures of the city. When they arrived, we rode the service elevator to the penthouse, got out, and hiked the service stairs to the top. We were up there for a while, me supervising, making sure they didn’t try to somersault off the side. They took thousands of pictures at hundreds of angles. The city was beautiful, indeed, the oranges and purples burning into the silhouettes of the skyscrapers surrounding the city and the college a few miles south. One young girl, flirty and helpless, told me she was too scared to stand too close to the edge. She asked if I could hold her waist while she took pictures over the side. I smiled, complied; I’m sure she thought I was relishing every pervy moment grabbing some sorority girl’s hips, but instead, I was looking down. I knew. I was going to take this leap soon. Now here I am.

Floor sixteen.

The top three floors of the building, outside of the maintenance floor in the penthouse, were owned by the same law firm, the biggest in the city. Hundreds of millions of dollars walked in and out of their doors every day. The people were nice and fake, usually too busy to acknowledge you. Most of the parking spaces in the subterranean parking belonged to them, with hundred-thousand dollar cars lining each space. And the secret hidden truth was that several of the posh condos in the buildings across the street, the ones above the lovely, upper-crust boutiques, were owned by several of the lawyers from this building. Last week, the firm had a huge function inviting the graduate students from the law school to come to the building. They catered a huge meal, served lots of booze, got everyone very drunk, and recruited a ton of interns and future lawyers as a result. At the end of the night, all the young men stumbled to their taxis and Ubers. A few moments after that, many of the female recruits left out the front door, their arms around the older, more prominent lawyers of the building. They all walked, hand-in-hand, with their gentlemen across the street, to the private entrances of the posh condos, where they no doubt earned their place with the company.

I hate cliches, but everything does feel like slow-motion. Floor 14, and it feels like the thrill ride I’ve always hoped it would be. I’ve wanted to end things for a long time now, but I am, if nothing else, a coward. Gun-shot wounds, nooses, drowning, overdoses… they all sounded so painful to me. And what if I got things wrong? How could I live the rest of my life as an invalid knowing that I couldn’t even swallow a bullet successfully? This felt the quickest, and the most final. Death was certain, guaranteed, and there’s every reason to believe that I’ll likely be unconscious before I hit the ground, so I doubted I’d feel a thing. I just needed an opportunity big enough (or, rather, tall enough) to take the leap. And, an ironic thought: I needed courage.

Floor twelve.

The accounting firm. Two floors. The quietest two floors, in fact. Nothing but stress and phone calls. They don’t make a fuss in the building; they don’t stir the pot. A number of them are still here when I lock the building down and many remain after I check out in the evening. I can relate. For eighteen years, I was a math teacher. Algebra, geometry, trig. I taught a personal finance elective that I was really proud of. Twelve years in the same district. Late nights stuck in empty classrooms, red pen in my hands, check, check, wrong, check, wrong, check. More than a thousand students in my time, caring, teaching, mentoring. Then we get the call. Budget cuts. Consolidation. District restructuring. Suddenly my school is closing. I’m safe, they say. Teacher with my experience? I’ll be fine. July comes, and I have no contract. Turns out the younger hires in the district have lower years of experience, which means lower salaries. They could afford more teachers for the consolidated school if they brought over the ones with less experience. Cost-effective. Without any fanfare, I’m without a job. After weeks of self-loathing, I started filling out applications. “Security Guard” popped up on my feed, and a seed was planted.

My wife is an accountant. The stay-at-home variety. She would have no doubt hated this firm. She works in her pajamas, doing bookkeeping for several businesses, real estate accounting, and she flies through tax returns during tax season. She was very supportive after I was laid off. “You can do some work for me,” she said. “I can take on more business to hold us over,” she said. “We can tighten the belt a bit and get through this,” she said. She was wonderful in a crisis. I loved her for that, but there was no way she could have understood. I stopped wanting to teach three years ago. I stopped wanting to get out of bed four years ago. I stopped being happy five years ago. I was at a clinic, and the clinic speaker asked, “What’s your ‘why’? Why do you get out of bed every morning?” And I had no answer.

Floor nine.

Miscellaneous. A non-profit. A debt management firm. A few other smaller companies that I have no idea what they do. I can also relate.

I went to college in the town I grew up in. I was happy about that, at the time. But what if I had gone out of town, out of state? I took the safe option. I graduate, find a teaching job. Job security, or so I thought. Great benefits. Summers off. It was the safe choice. Dated a girl in high school. Her family went to church with my family. We continued seeing each other in college. After college, I married her. She was a good woman, good heart, faithful; she was a very safe choice. I have made one choice after another in life, each one as risk-averse as I could make it, each one safer than the last. My life has been so very safe. I am such a coward, I know; I’d never do anything if it meant putting something at risk. So now, here I am, desperate for courage.

Courage to do something unsafe.

Floor seven.

People have started noticing. I can’t hear anything, wind tearing through my face, hair, and clothes, but I can see people on the ground pointing up, getting their friends’ attention, trying desperately to open their camera apps fast enough. Desperate to document my fall.

What is my reason? What is my “why?” I thought I wanted to travel; see the world, write a blog or something. But then work happened, and time off was difficult, and we wanted to save money to start a family. I thought that maybe I would be a successful, renowned teacher, write some curriculum books, become one of those educational sell-outs who leave the classroom to pedal some pedagogy that will shift again in the next five-year paradigm cycle. But no: I suffered the same as every teacher, a victim of a system where administrative support is non-existent and the focus stopped being about making students better people and became about getting them through at any cost. Disillusionment was fast and swift. Be patient; be patient and safe, and your moment will come.

Only it didn’t come.

Floor five.

District attorney’s office. They had extra security, armed security, and policies that trumped my authority at every turn. They didn’t need me, and they likely wouldn’t care if I was gone.

She would, though. My wife didn’t do anything in all this. I hate the idea of her suffering because of my terrible choices. She would care that I was gone, but she was still young, still lovely. She had plenty of time to find a new man more worthy of her kindness and her heart. My kids would miss me, I’m sure. My two older boys, fifteen and fourteen. Just started Varsity Football and Wrestling. Both on Honor Roll. Very proud of them. And my little girl, seven, reading on third-grade level and singing in her elementary school choir. As lovely as she could be. They all deserve better. A father who isn’t a coward, a man that they can be proud of, a figure that isn’t ashamed of himself all the time.

Floor four.

Non-profit office for a state-sponsored scholarship initiative. I grabbed a few pamphlets my first week and started filling them out for my boys. They were doing something people could be proud of. I talked with a rep while I was doing my rounds, and he told me about a few things that my boys could do to strengthen their chances of getting approved for the scholarship. They even offer it for my alma mater. My boys are a shoe-in, no doubt, and if my little girl keeps things up, colleges will be paying her for the right to educate her. They will certainly do great things, with or without me.

Floor three.

You know, my father was never around. I wonder what his purpose was. It certainly wasn’t trying to raise me or make my life better. I wonder how much my life would have changed if he’d have stuck it out, raised me right, made it about me instead of about him?

And here I am, taking the quick way out too. My loving wife, my beautiful children: they’ll be fine without me. But would they be better with me? What if my purpose wasn’t my job, my future, my legacy? What if my purpose was them? I could support my wife and her successful stories. I could be at all my kids’ games, recitals, concerts. I could be there for them when challenges come up, when and where I can help. I’m not destined to do anything worthy of changing the world, that much is clear. But what if they are?

Floor two.

What if the best thing I could do for this world is love them?

I think I’ve made a mistake.

I’ve made a mistake.

I’ve made a mistake.

…

Ground floor.