Being Alive

“Okay,” He started off again. “Say someone walks out into the middle of a frozen pond, but, like, they know it’s not really frozen. Like – there’s been a freeze after a thaw, and everyone knows that the pond isn’t safe to walk on. But they go out into the middle of it and just stand there, and it’s not like they are trying to kill themselves, like directly, but they wouldn’t be too bothered if they fell through the ice and drowned you know?”

She was staring up into the August evening sky. She hated to think of winter in August. August was like the end of the world – everything falls off after the 31st, everyone shrinks away to hibernation. No use to think of that impending end now. The thoughts came anyway: her cold lonely student apartment, the cold treks home from the library at 5:30pm in total darkness, the cold - “Usually, ponds aren’t deep enough to drown in.” She interrupted her own dispiriting train of thought. “And there’s no current, so if someone fell in, they’d probably just be standing in three feet of really cold water.”

“Okay but,” He sat up, leaning one elbow as he picked at the grass and looked down at her starring up at the hazy sky beside him. The sky was hazy from the wildfires. The air kind of smelt like a bonfire – or was that just his imagination? He liked to think about the winter in this heavy summer heat – it was like putting a pack of frozen peas against a throbbing angry gash in your knee. “Okay but – say it was a stream or a creek – like in Little Women.” He picked a handful of grass and put it on her stomach, spreading it and patting it to cover the part of her belly left exposed by her crop top.

Her mouth pursed against her will at the mention of Little Women in the context of half-assed suicides. It seemed mildly disrespectful to the March sisters. Amy would never have tried to commit suicide. Then she got more annoyed at him for making her feel like she needed to make a serious defense for a fictional character – even if it was only in her head. Besides it was a frozen lake in Little Women.

“This is so stupid.” She said to the sky and to him. “What? Are you trying to find a way to commit suicide without actually committing suicide? Like either you have the guts to actually off yourself or it’s just a cry for attention. Like do it – actually do it – or get over it. Don’t stand in a frozen pond waiting for people to notice that you want to do it.”

“Okay but –,” He sort of giggled at her annoyance. He wanted to continue on with this hypothetical nonsensical conversation. “But maybe it’s not so clear – like if you want to live or die – like sometimes you feel like you can’t, but you can’t quite end it either, so you put it in the hands of the gods. Like okay if this ice breaks I’m swept away – I’m meant to kill myself. But if it doesn’t then I’m not.”

“God, what a cop out.” She sat up, now really annoyed. And the grass he had been patting onto her stomach fell onto the ground, and a bit down her shorts – making her more annoyed still. He sat up too, surprised at her sudden vehemence. “Like no one’s going to decide to live for you. You’re here and – and – god – right now people are, are holding onto planes taking off, and, and passing their babies into strangers’ hands because… for some reason…” She gave up on that line of argument, she couldn’t understand the horrors those people across the world were facing, much less what they were thinking and feeling. “… And those people are alive the same way we are. It feels the same,” She put her hands to her heart. “And they want to be alive and they want their little babies to be alive so much that, that nothing else matters.”

She was starting to get choked up. She had no idea that she felt so strongly about any of this – whatever this was. She had no idea why she had brought up the recent videos and photos that had been circulating online from Afghanistan. Maybe because she couldn’t get them out of her head. They were just sitting behind her eyes or playing out on the grey sky above over and over again as she gazed into it. She knew this dough-eyed, dreamy boy had no real intention of killing himself, thank god, he just liked to pose these philosophical problems to pass the time on long summer afternoons. But the smoky sun, the year of muted suffering, the actual living tragedy happening so far away that was so urgent, so active, the grass making her itchy - the world was staggeringly real to her today. His hypothetical problems were not only uninteresting, they were infuriating.

“And you want to - to stand in the middle of a pond and what?” She gestured in front of her, as if the pond was before them. She was talking to him, almost yelling at him, but not looking at him – she was looking at the imaginary pond, he thought. “See what your imaginary gods decide to do? If you can’t even make up your mind to be alive…” Tears really started to fall now. “Then how are you going to do anything else? You’re just going to - to sit there…and choose never to act on anything?”

She blushed – that last rhetorical question had made apparent, at least to her, why she was so annoyed at his passive moral quandaries. She was ashamed that somehow her late-adolescent attachment to this boy and her frustration at his apparent blindness to her attachment had somehow got mixed up in her head with all those people fighting for their lives across the world. But she couldn’t help anything going on in her brain right now, it was a mess. And the summer was almost over.

At first, he was going to tease her, but then she had brought up Afghanistan – that made him mad. What? Just because there was terrible suffering in the world – he – he – what could he do, what did it have to do with him, really, all he could do is watch – like everyone else. Be passive. It was that same passivity like in the pond problem he had brought up, wasn’t it? We don’t have a choice but to be passive. And now he was confused. Why was she crying? Had he missed something? All summer he had been waiting, watching her, touching her when the opportunity was natural or playful, and now she was crying next to him, and he felt like he had been left behind somewhere.

“Its just that – if those people” she tried to go on through tears, but her voice cracked from emotion and something near hysteria. She stood up and glared down at him – her arms crossed over her stomach where he had moments ago been patting grass, feeling her skin. Her shoulders rose and fell, up and down, up and down as she tried to gain control of her breath. “If they can decide that a life filled with fear and unknowns and, and pain and misery is worth that much trouble. Then, then what right do we – do you have of – of nothingness.”

In astonishment, he starred up at her face. It was red and wet, and angry eyes starring fiercely down at him. He slowly, tentatively reached for her hand, but she brushed him away forcefully and turned to leave.

Suddenly, blood rushed to his head, he got to his feet and grabbed her arm. She turned to him with a flash of anger.

He pressed her into him and kissed her.