MidReal Story
Whispers of Hope
Scenario: Girl with depression meets ghost who committed suicide and learns to appreciate life.
Create my version of this story
I found myself on a bridge.
A cold metal railing was digging into my hands, the smell of damp concrete and water in the air.
The sounds of cars honking and water crashing was distant here as I stood on the edge, staring off into the nothingness.
The river looked black, even though I knew there was water there.
It was flowing, I could tell by the way it was moving and disappearing under the bridge, but I couldn’t see it.
All I saw was darkness.
There were a few street lamps along the way, some lights in the distance from the buildings of downtown, but it was all so dark.
I could feel the darkness creeping up on me, surrounding me, wrapping me up like a blanket.
The weight in my chest was almost unbearable.
It had been getting worse every day.
As I looked down into the darkness, I felt detached from everything around me.
Nothing felt real.
It was like I was just barely existing in this world, not really a part of it.
The river below flowed steadily, but the current was strong.
I could see how fast it was going, but it didn’t look like it was moving at all.
That’s how I felt most of the time, like I was stuck in one place while the world moved around me.
I tried to take a deep breath, but my lungs felt constricted and my throat clogged up.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe as I tried to calm myself down.
I’m just looking, I told myself, not doing anything, just looking.
I could feel my hands slipping on the metal railing as I leaned over to get a better look at the river below.
I could hear the water rushing over rocks, carrying sticks and leaves along with it as it went by so quickly, but I couldn’t see anything in that darkness below me.
How could something be moving so quickly and not be going anywhere?
It was a river; it had to be going somewhere.
It wasn’t even that wide here and there was nothing holding it back except for that bridge.
If it wanted, that river could probably go anywhere, but instead it just stayed right there under the bridge, taunting me with its motion.
A voice in my head told me to jump into that river and let it carry me away to someplace else.
Let it take me and do whatever it wanted because anything had to be better than this life.
But another voice said that jumping wouldn’t solve anything—after all, what’s one less person in this city?
There were millions of people living in this town; no one would miss me if I were gone.
The bridge would be there long after I wasn’t and the river would keep flowing without me in it.
This bridge would never be the same again for whoever found me there—someone who might have been young enough to remember it a few years from now or someone who would walk over it a thousand times without thinking twice about what had happened there.
The bridge would have memories of me forever though; it would remember that I stood there and the last thing I thought before I jumped into the river below to end it all.
The metal railing creaked as I looked over the edge at the dark water below me, trying to figure out if I could actually jump from here and end it or if I would survive the fall and have to deal with the consequences of that.
My vision blurred as I tried to focus on what I could see below me, the darkness twisting and turning like a living thing down there in the riverbed.
I could feel tears stinging in my eyes again as I looked down at the cold water below me and I could barely hold myself up anymore.
It would be so easy to step up onto the railing and then let go of everything I had ever known in my life.
It wouldn’t hurt; I wouldn’t even know that it had happened because the water would be so cold that everything would go numb instantly.
I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath before stepping up onto the metal railing in front of me, feeling how cold it was through my shoes against the bottoms of my feet.
All I had to do now was step off the edge and let nature take its course by doing what humans had been doing for millions of years—ending our lives when we couldn’t handle them anymore.
I kept my eyes closed for a moment before slowly opening them again, feeling a wave of sadness wash over me because I knew that I didn’t have it in me to do it.
The water looked so cold and uninviting, but there was still a part of me that wanted to live even if I didn’t know why.
Did I really want to die?
I took a deep breath before stepping back down off the railing, letting out a sigh.
That was my answer: I didn’t want to die even though there were times when I felt like I did.
At that moment, I heard someone approach me from behind, but I didn’t turn around because I didn’t want them to see the tears that I had been trying so hard to hold back.
I stared down at the black water beneath me as tears ran down my cheeks, falling from my chin into the current below, never to be seen again.
Whoever it was that had walked up behind me stopped and stood next to me, but I still didn’t turn around because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to talk even if I really wanted to at that point.
The person who was standing next to me reached over and grabbed my hand, but I still didn’t turn around because I knew that it wasn’t Sarah or her mother—the only two people who would ever come looking for me in the middle of the night.
I closed my eyes as he gently squeezed my hand, feeling the cool air against my skin as he exhaled a long breath, almost as if he had been holding his breath for a long time and had finally been able to let it out all at once after what seemed like forever.
“Please don’t do this,” he begged me in a soft voice, but I still didn’t turn around to look at him even though every bone in my body screamed at me that I needed to see the person whose hand was holding mine so tightly that his knuckles were turning white against the black of the night.
I listened for a long moment to the sound of his voice because it sounded familiar, but at the same time it didn’t because it was the voice of a stranger even though it wasn’t one that I hadn’t heard before.
I knew that it was a guy’s voice that I was listening to even though it sounded thready and unsteady with a hint of panic and fear.
The sound was oddly comforting even though it shouldn’t have been because there was no reason for his voice to be comforting at all coming from someone who I didn’t know and who didn’t know me either.
I stepped back from the railing even more, pulling my hand free from his as I tried to get away from him not knowing why, but instinctively knowing that it wouldn’t be a good idea to look at him even though I wanted to so badly that it hurt to not be able to see his face after what felt like forever of not having anyone to talk to or to be around when things got so bad that it seemed like the only solution would be to end it all.
I didn’t know who he was or what he wanted from me, but at the same time it didn’t really matter because nothing mattered anymore and I didn’t care about anything at all especially not myself because there wasn’t anything worth caring about when it came to me even if there were people who said that they cared about me when they really didn’t because they wouldn’t have left me all alone to feel like this over and over again if they did care about me at all like they said that they did when they really didn’t or weren’t around to help me when things got so bad that it seemed like the only way to end my suffering would be to end it all even if it meant hurting the people who cared about me even if they really didn’t have any reason to care about me at all when there wasn’t anything to care about when it came to someone like me.
The figure stepped forward, reaching out to grab my hand as it moved closer and closer to me with every step that it took, but I wasn’t ready for him to touch me yet, not when he felt like a stranger to me even if his voice sounded familiar to my ears after what felt like forever of not having anyone to talk to or to spend time with when things got so bad that it seemed like the only way to end my suffering would be to end it all even if it meant hurting the people who cared about me even though they would be better off without me in their lives anyway because there wasn’t anything good or worthwhile or lovable about someone as pathetic as me.
“Please don’t do this,” he whispered, but his touch was cold against my skin, making my blood run ice cold as my heart started pounding so loudly that it drowned out everything else around me except for his voice.
I tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn’t let me go even though he wasn’t holding onto me very tightly at all.
“Don’t do this,” he said again as he took another step closer to me, but this time his touch was warm against my skin even if his voice was still cold and distant as he begged me not to do whatever it was that he thought that I was going to do.
I looked over at him, but he had pulled up his hood even more than before and all that I could see of his face was a pair of blue eyes that seemed to be glowing even in the darkness of the night.
“Don’t do this,” he said again, stepping even closer to me even though every bone in my body screamed at me that I should step back even more, but I couldn’t move and was frozen in place instead as he reached out to grab my hand even though I was still holding onto the railing so tightly that my fingers had gone white.
I looked up at him, trying to see his face even though I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see much of anything because he had pulled up the hood of his jacket even more than before.
The darkness was still covering him up enough that all that I could see of him was a pair of blue eyes that seemed to be glowing in the darkness of the night as he took another step closer to me, trying to get me to take another step back even if he didn’t say anything this time.
His voice was now a whisper as he leaned in closer to me, trying to get me to look away from where the water below was rushing by so fast that if I fell in then there would be no way for me to get out again because the current would just take me down river until I drowned even if it wasn’t very deep here because of the way that the bridge had been built so high above the water as a way of keeping anyone from swimming or getting too close because of how dangerous it was around here most of the time.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered against my ear as he bent down closer to me so that he could reach out and touch the side of my face.
“I’ll make the pain go away,” he promised me with a smile even though there wasn’t anything for either one of us to be smiling about after what had happened tonight even if he didn’t know about any of it because there hadn’t been any reason for him to be around or for anyone else either since no one knew about any of the things that I had been going through all alone with no one around to help me when things had gotten so bad that they seemed like they would never get better.
I opened my mouth to say something, but no words would come out even though everything inside of me was screaming at me that I needed this more than anything else right now after everything that had happened tonight.
I looked over at him, shivering a little bit because he sounded so cold and distant now even though his touch was still warm against my skin as he stepped back from me, pulling his hand away from where it had been touching my face.
“I can make everything better,” he said again even as he took another step closer to me even as he kept on smiling at me even though everything inside of me was screaming at me that something wasn’t right and that he wasn’t someone who could help me get through this even if he wanted to because his touch was so cold against my skin now and there was something about him that made me feel uncomfortable even if I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was yet.
I looked over at him one more time before taking another step back from him since he felt like a stranger even though he looked familiar somehow even if I couldn’t quite remember where or how I knew him from because he felt familiar somehow even though something told me that I shouldn’t want anything to do with someone who felt this wrong in every single way.
“Please stay,” he begged me in a soft voice as he reached out to grab onto my hand one more time no matter how much I tried to pull away from him again.
