07. Chapter 3: The Villain in the Story

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Transcript

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Chapter 3 The Villain in the Story. What followed that moment in Mabula between Santiago and I when I gave him back the diamond ring and told him I was not in love with him? It's hard for me to say because I can't recall the words, moments, or specifics. It's all a dusty orange apocalyptic haze, like the streets in the Middle East when there is a sandstorm. Not just because it's years later, but because even as it happened, I was disconnected from the moment. I was separated from reality and operating on autopilot, as I had been throughout the entire time we were married. I just remember him leaving me by sunrise, announcing he was off to the Cyprus embassy to get us divorced, as if a divorce were as simple as one person in a marriage popping down to the embassy and requesting it. I lay in bed curled in a fetal position, convinced I was an awful, selfish, narcissistic person. I am not sure if he said those words to me or if I said them to myself. I know that I was planning over and over again to ride up the dingy steel elevator to the 13th floor on the top of the building to jump off the roof to my death. Over and over again, the words played on a loop in my brain. I am a terrible person. I was the villain in the story. I had decided that I didn't deserve to live anymore. I decided I had done something unforgivable. How could I be such a complete narcissist that I married someone and eight weeks later said, see you later? How could I put him through the embarrassment, the shame, the sadness, and the heartbreak? The guilt felt insurmountable, and I couldn't see him ever forgiving me, nor me forgiving myself. The best solution seemed to be to end my life. In this moment of despair, jumping off a building seemed to be the only way out. How had I ended up here? In Mabula, about to be divorced, visualizing standing on the roof of a building at age 25. At that moment, I didn't really know the answer to that question. It felt like my life had spun so out of control in the previous months that it has taken years of self-reflection to even trace the steps backwards to tell you the story. I knew this: that despite 95% of me thinking I didn't deserve to live, there was a small force within me that was fighting it. As bad as things were, there was some force deep down within me that kept me safe. There was a part of me that didn't want to give up. And as I repeatedly imagined over and over again, riding up that elevator to the 13th floor of the tower and jumping off the roof, that force helped me to see that I actually didn't need to get on that ledge. What I needed was to get on another flight back home. I needed to go to Canada, where I'd come from only a day before. Or it would be the end of my life.