I felt myself jump.  Felt myself let go of it all.  I was free falling from three stories up, but the fall took so long, I feel like I was falling from the Empire State Building.

And all I could think of during that fall is "Why is my life not flashing before my eyes?"  Isn't that what people say happens moments before your death?  My life can't be so pathetic that it doesn't flash before my eyes.  It just can't.  But apparently it did.  So now I find myself wondering, do I really want to live?  Am I happy I jumped?  That I finally took the inititive that my father kept telling me to take and I finally followed through with something.

My father.  Now there is a thought I should care less about having moments before sure, painful death.  Why did I never please him?  I competed in sports, excelled in school, worked my **** off in college.  Yet none of that ever made him proud of me.  I guess that may be a popular feeling that most sons have of their fathers.  Not that the feeling mattered anymore.  He's dead.  He's been dead for several months now, circumstances still unknown to me.    And I am about to be dead as well.

 I look to my side and see the forest of trees, whizzing by, blurried by the accelerating drop of my body, yet frozen, as if in slow-motion.  Will anyone miss me?  Will my funeral resemble my free-fall: quick and painful for family members; yet slow and blurry for former friends?  It'll probably be closed casket, as I imagine I won't be a pretty corpse.

Should I be more concerned with my impending death?  The dirt ground in front of the house is getting closer now.  In a moment, I'll smack the earth, shattering bones, rupturing organs.  My skull will almost immediately crack open, causing immense brain damage and probably instant death.  And here it comes...  Five, four, three, two, one...

BEEP.  BEEP.  BEEP.

"Oh, Jesus.  He's awake!"

My mother is hoovering above me, waving at something or someone.  She has very obviously been crying.  The rims around her eyes are still red, with the whites more bloodshot than my drunken father's have ever been.

 "You suffered a terrible fall, honey."

That I knew.  Three stories.  How am I still alive?  I am not in much pain.  I must be highly drugged.  And I am unable to move my mouth.

"You were at your father's house.  You must have fainted, or blacked out.  But you fell backwards and your head hit one of the power tools there.  You have had a pretty bad concussion.

"And the officers on scene said you were lucky that you fell backwards.  Because if you had fallen forward, you would have gone right off the balcony, down three stories."

But I did fall forward.  No, I jumped.