Two in the morning. The typical early January night breeze was blushing my cheeks. The icy touch of my hands on the metal of the railing seemed to almost pierce my fingers. The moment had come. I pulled up my nose and looked below: welcoming me was the emptiness, obscured by the blackness of the night that had mingled with the faint waves of the river and that seemed to my unclouded eyes nothing but absolute utopia.<<Finally>> I whispered in a sort of choked groan. I lifted my chin to the cloudy sky and closed my eyes slowly.

 I let God's tears hit my face and mingle with my own. The last rain to wet my body. My last breaths. All I had to do was climb. And everything would be over. I inhaled with the last strength I possessed in my body, as if trying to take in as much air as possible for later, though I did not know what fate would have in store for me on the other side. I was to find out soon anyway. I lifted my left leg, holding myself steady and firm with my tired, trembling hands. Another gentle push and both feet touched the outside of the unconscious stone of the bridge. The slow breathing turned into an intense and exhausting panting. My head did not stop sending me signals to stop this. I did not want to listen to it.

I no longer wanted to try to survive.

I immersed myself in thinking back to the last moments of my life, looking for something that would save me, or something that would give me the final push to jump, but I found nothing. It was as if I had suddenly forgotten everything I had lived through, as if the restoration of my soul was already taking place. I was already dying. I was consciously dying.A loud sound of footsteps in the distance tried to deafen me, but I ignored it and began to let go. Finger by finger I felt myself gradually losing contact with reality. It was done. I was falling.I had always wondered what it would feel like, to die.

I had always wondered what it would be like, to die. The bruised part of my head was convinced that I would touch peace with one finger, that I could listen to the silence of the universe inside me, floating in a sea of nothingness. That nothingness that doesn't exhaust you, that doesn't bore you, but that no matter how dead you are, would make you feel alive. This idea had become so horribly ingrained in every nerve of me, that it had driven me to the status of someone who desperately seeks happiness. I saw death and happiness in the same way. As if they were one synonymous with the other. Almost as if they touched each other, and completed each other. I was convinced that once I touched the icy waters of this river, the last vestiges of my useless survival instincts would be activated to at least try not to make me swallow huge quantities of water, but instead I felt nothing.I did not feel the wet feeling on my clothes, the shortness of breath or the loss of consciousness.Was I dead?My eyes suddenly opened wide. In front of me was nothing but the same height as before, the same view as before, the same darkness as before, except for one thing.That sudden warmth that was enveloping the frigid contrast of my body. That gentle but strong grip that held me by the chest. Even before I found myself at thirty degrees to the balustrade I was immediately pushed towards the opposite side. I tried to wriggle out of the strange grip, but it seemed my flesh refused to cooperate with my mind and I ended up back on the side of safety. I could clearly feel my calves slipping on the drops of the railing, scratching at the polyester of my trousers, and the gusts of incestuous air making their way inside the lower openings of the cargo ships, shuddering me. I could feel the small female body behind me trying to give the last pulls with all its might, tripping over itself, so much so that I almost fell down, into the water. Her sobs choked with fatigue penetrated my ears, mingling between my temples. Everything was happening so fast. I no longer understood anything.

As soon as I touched solidity my legs, which had remained strong and stable all that time, gave way and I fell. Not on the ground, though. On that person. A person whose cry I felt move my fragmented heart, whose breath I felt compensate for my own, exhausted one. The hands that a few seconds before were holding me did not let go, on the contrary. One of them held me by the hip, as if afraid to let go, while the other rested trembling on my head. I tried to get up, confused, but she wouldn't let me. Our bodies wet from the rain, frozen by the concrete, entwined by our limbs, remained glued together for a few more seconds. Seconds that became minutes and minutes. The silence broke. <<Will you explain why!? Why!?>> she bellowed, her voice rippling with supposed desperation.
Meanwhile, a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky and the sound of the blast accompanied his comparatively quiet words. I stared into the wet void in front of me, and thought it was the most beautiful voice I had ever heard. It took hold of my limbs like a cloud gathered from the unclear sky above us, and each continuous "why" of hers inflamed my icy body, entering it in an endless echo. I wanted so much to answer her, to tell her she should have let me die, yet the only answer I could give her was the first liberating cry of a lifetime. I let go of my seventy kilos on her, heedless of whether it hurt or not, and I cried.I don't know why, but I cried. For the first time, I cried. I had just realised, that someone had offered to save my life. Almost sacrificing her own. For me.I thought she would complain about the whining of a whole-grown man slapped in her face, but instead, to my surprise, she squeezed me even tighter. She twisted her legs around my buttocks as if it were an instinctive action, and continued to murmur words of comfort to me. <<I am so sorry>> she tried to say. 

I found myself pushing my arms against my fingers moistened by the falling rain, and I struggled up on my elbows, still letting the stranger touch me in that shameless way. Her hand moved from the head to the nape of my neck and from the nape back to the head, creating a vicious circle that I found extremely comforting. I could not stop crying. My tears fell on his face, making it wetter than it already was, and bounced against his cheek dried up by thinness, ending up for fleeting moments in the air and giving me the impression that I could mirror myself in it. I saw a weak, distraught man, a real look at a not so real reality.

I realised how vulnerable I was.