Winter
A Story by Yves
I.
Three in the morning. Again.
The balcony had become my nocturnal territory. From the seventh floor, Buenos Aires stretched out like a faulty electrical circuit: lights flickering, streets breathing cars, people reduced to mere specks of motion.
I enjoyed inventing stories for them. She's going to see her sick mother. He's just lost his job. That couple is falling in love without knowing it yet. Antisocial, they had called me. But it wasn't that. I was fascinated by people from a distance. From above. Where their problems were smaller than mine.
The night held something the day never understood. A duality: the darkness of my thoughts mixing with the glow of the moon and the stars. Melancholically beautiful, like everything that hurts and attracts at the same time.
"Awake again?" My mother's voice cut through the hallway. Bathrobe. Three in the morning. Her turn for the bathroom.
"I'm thinking."
"You think too much, Mateo."
"I know."
She lingered in the doorway for a moment, as if waiting for me to say more. I didn't. I never did. Eventually, she sighed and left.
She was right. She always was. But I didn't know how to stop thinking. It was like asking a river to stop flowing.
II.
"Intelligent." That was my label since primary school.
"I wish I were like you," they'd tell me at the Economics faculty. "How lucky to have that brain."
Luck. As if this brain were a prize and not a prison. As if the thoughts didn't stampede at four in the morning: financial markets, existentialism, the Trojan War, the 2008 crisis, Caravaggio, string theory. All at once. All demanding attention.
Wikipedia was my burrow. Each article opened ten more tabs. I could explain the German hyperinflation of 1923 and in the same conversation quote Camus. But I couldn't explain why that didn't make me happy.
Knowledge without someone to share it with is just noise in an empty room.
Friends? I had them. We went out on Friday to the bar in Palermo. Beer, laughter, anecdotes. They were good people. But there was always a wall. I built it. Brick by brick. Superficial conversations. Shared jokes. Never the deep stuff. Never the real stuff.
Not because I didn't want to. But because I was afraid that if they truly knew me, they would stop wanting to know me.
Lucas once asked me, after three beers: "Are you alright, Mateo? Seriously."
"Yeah, why?"
"I don't know. Sometimes it seems like you're here, but you're not."
He was right. But I smiled and changed the subject. I always changed the subject.
III.
Solitude came early.
I have a clear memory: eight years old, coming home from school. The house keyless because Mom worked until seven. The blue backpack falling to the floor. The metallic sound of the zipper echoing in empty walls.
Then, nothing. Just the hum of the refrigerator and the wall clock ticking the seconds. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Like a metronome counting my loneliness.
I learned to cook pasta at nine. To do my homework alone. To not be scared of the empty house. But I never learned to make the solitude stop talking to me.
Because when you are alone, the only thing that keeps you company is your mind. And mine awakened dark things. Questions without answers. Fears without names. That recurrent thought: "What if one day I just cease to exist?"
But solitude also made me curious. I started reading. Devouring old encyclopedias Mom had from her student days. Looking for answers in books when I couldn't find them in people.
Solitude educated me. It also hurt me. It's hard to tell which effect was stronger.
IV.
Mom worked at a hospital. Nurse on the afternoon shift. She came home with tired eyes and hands smelling of hand sanitizer. Some nights I would hear her crying in the kitchen. Softly. As if she didn't want me to hear.
"Everything okay, Mom?"
"Yes, love. Long day, that's all."
She never told me a patient had died. Or that her salary wasn't enough. Or that she was tired of being tired. She protected me from her problems just as I protected her from mine.
We were two people living in the same house, loving each other, but inhabiting separate worlds.
She cooked milanesas on Sundays. My favorites. She'd ask me about university. I'd tell her the minimum. "Fine. Passed an exam. Yes, the guys invited me out."
What I never told her: "Mom, sometimes I don't want to wake up. Sometimes I think the world would be the same without me. Sometimes I have so much noise in my head that the silence terrifies me."
I never found the words. Or maybe I never wanted to hurt her.
V.
June arrived with rain. My favorite month. My favorite season.
There was something honest about winter. The cold didn't pretend to be anything else. The darkness came early and stayed. Gray days didn't pretend to be bright.
That afternoon I came back from the faculty. Macroeconomics exam passed. I should have felt good. I felt nothing.
I made coffee. The steam drew ghosts in the air of my room. Outside, Buenos Aires blurred behind the wet window. The drops ran like tears on the glass.
Mom had a night shift. The house would be empty until eight in the morning.
I lay down, well covered. The sheets smelled of fabric softener. The sound of the rain was a constant, hypnotic drum. It reminded me of when I was a kid and the rain lulled me to sleep.
I looked at the clonazepam bottle on the nightstand. I had taken it from the shelf an hour ago. I don't remember when I made the decision. Maybe I never made it. Maybe the decision took hold of me.
I opened the bottle slowly. The sound of the plastic turning. The small white pills. Seemingly harmless.
I counted them. Sixteen.
I recounted them. Sixteen.
The paper with the emergency number was on my desk. Suicide Assistance Center: 135. I had written it months ago. "Just in case," I told myself then.
I just had to dial. Seven digits. Three numbers. So easy.
I didn't do it.
Instead, I swallowed the pills with the warm coffee. One by one. Methodically. As if it were my nightly medication and not my final decision.
The rain kept falling. The city kept breathing. Everything continued as normal.
I lay down. Closed my eyes.
"Winter," I thought. "My favorite season."
I didn't want to wake up.
VI.
I woke up without waking up.
The first thing was panic. I tried to open my eyes. Nothing. Move my fingers. Nothing. My arms. My legs. Nothing. I screamed. No sound came out.
Panic is physical even without a body. Cold. Sharp. Like invisible needles plunging into a chest that no longer exists.
Then came the realization, slow and heavy as lead: I no longer had a body to move.
A voice spoke. It came from nowhere in particular. Or it came from everywhere at once. As if the air itself had a voice.
"Mateo."
"Who are you?"
"Someone who knows your story. Birth. Life. Death. Everything."
The word "death" resonated. Real. Definitive.
"Am I dead?"
"Yes."
I waited to feel something. Horror. Relief. Sadness. I felt nothing. Just a strange emptiness. Like the sensation of forgetting something important but not remembering what.
"How?"
"That is your task. Until you remember how you died, you cannot rest."
"But... I don't remember anything. I was sleeping and..."
"I know. That's why you are here. In limbo. Between worlds."
"I don't understand."
"You will understand. Or not. That depends on you."
The voice faded like the smoke from my last coffee.
I was left floating in the darkness. Alone. As always.
VII.
Eventually, I realized I could move. Not walk. Float. As if gravity were a suggestion, not a law.
I went back to my room. The door was closed. I passed through the door.
That feeling. As if I had never fully existed. As if matter were only an illusion that had finally ended.
My body was in the bed. I was in the bed. Covered. Peaceful. As if I were sleeping.
But I wasn't sleeping.
The door opened. Mom entered with bags from Coto. Shift over. Eight in the morning. Routine. She was going to prepare breakfast.
"Mateo? Still sleeping? It's eight o'clock, love."
She dropped the bags on the floor. Approached the bed.
"Mateo?"
She touched my shoulder. My shoulder. The shoulder of the body that was mine.
I watched her face change. Tiredness. Confusion. Panic. Horror. All in three seconds.
"Mateo? Mateo, wake up. Wake up."
She shook it. The body didn't respond. Of course not.
She touched my cheek. Withdrew her hand quickly. As if she had been burned.
"You're cold. Why are you so cold?"
The grocery bags had fallen. An orange rolled under my bed. She didn't see it. She only saw me.
She screamed my name. Once. Loudly. Then again. More desperately. The third time it broke in her throat. A sound I had never heard from her. Animal. Primitive. The sound of something breaking irreparably.
She knelt beside the bed. Hugged the body. My body. She rocked. Cried. Sobbed. Howled.
I tried to hug her. My arms passed through her as if she were smoke.
"I'm here, Mom. I'm here. Don't be like this. Please."
But my words were silence. My screams were emptiness.
My heart had never been so broken. And I didn't even have a heart to break.
VIII.
The paramedics arrived. Two men in green uniforms. Professional routine. They had seen this hundreds of times.
They checked my body. Pulse. Temperature. Pupils. Protocol.
"How long ago did you find him?"
"I don't... I don't know... ten minutes... I just..." Mom couldn't finish the sentences.
"Was he using drugs?"
"No! My son did not..."
"It's protocol, ma'am. We have to ask."
"He studied economics. He was smart. He was..."
"Was." Past tense. As if I no longer existed. And I suppose technically that was true.
While they asked questions, I examined my body from the outside. No marks. No blood. No wounds. Nothing visible. How do you explain that someone twenty-three years old simply ceases to exist between night and morning?
I saw the empty clonazepam bottle on the nightstand.
One of the paramedics picked it up.
"Did he take this?"
"Yes, for anxiety. The doctor prescribed it. But... they were just for..."
Her voice faded as she understood what it meant.
The paramedic didn't say anything. Just nodded. Wrote something on his form.
Mom covered her mouth with both hands. Tears continued to fall.
"No. No, no, no. He wouldn't do that. My son wouldn't..."
But I did, Mom. I did.
And I didn't even remember doing it.
IX.
The days after the funeral were the worst.
Mom took a leave from the hospital. The house was in absolute silence. She would sit in the kitchen. Stare at the wall. For hours. She didn't eat. Barely drank water.
I stayed by her side. Invisible. Useless.
She would go into my room. Sit on my bed. Grab my pillow. Smell it.
"It still smells like you," she whispered. "You're still here."
Yes, Mom. I'm here. Right here.
But my words were wind that she couldn't feel.
Sometimes she talked to me. As if I could hear her.
"Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you ask for help? I would have... I could have..."
She would break down again. Crying until she fell asleep hugging my pillow.
I wanted to scream at her: "It's not your fault. It was never your fault. You did everything right. I was broken in a way you couldn't fix."
But I could only see. Not touch. Not comfort. Not exist in the way that mattered.
X.
I needed to remember. The voice had told me that until I remembered how I died, I couldn't rest. But every time I tried to recall that night, my mind blurred.
Flashback 1 appeared like lightning:
I was crossing Corrientes. Late. There was a car. Lights. The impact...
I quickly returned to my body in the morgue. The forensic scientists had already performed the autopsy. The report was on the table: "Benzodiazepine intoxication. No external trauma. No fractures. Death by overdose."
False memory.
Flashback 2 arrived days later:
Someone was chasing me. I ran. They caught me in an alley. A fight. A knife. The pain in my chest...
I checked my body again. Not a mark. Not a scratch. Nothing.
False memory.
Flashback 3 was the cruelest:
Sudden headache. Blinding. Unbearable. I fell. An aneurysm. A stroke. The world fading...
But I was twenty-three. No medical history. No prior symptoms. The autopsy report was clear: intentional overdose.
False memory.
My mind invented stories to protect me from the truth. But the truth was written in black ink on a medical document: I killed myself.
And yet, I couldn't remember doing it.
XI.
Weeks turned into months.
I followed Mom like a shadow. I saw her go back to work. I saw her pretend to be okay. I saw her cry in the hospital bathroom when she thought no one was watching.
I visited my friends.
They were at the usual bar. Our bar. Palermo. Thursday beers. The back table.
My spot was empty. Someone had placed an unopened beer where I used to sit. Quilmes. My favorite.
"I can't believe he's gone," Lucas said. His eyes were red.
"He was a good guy," Fede said. "A little weird, but a good guy."
"Always thinking a thousand things at once," Martín added. "Remember when he explained the 2008 crisis using napkins and the salt shaker?"
They laughed. A sad, nostalgic laugh.
"I should have asked him more times if he was okay," Lucas looked down. "Once I realized something was wrong. But I didn't push it."
"It's not your fault, man."
"I know. But still."
They fell silent for a while. They drank. They remembered. They laughed a little more.
After two beers, they changed the subject. Soccer. University. A new girl.
Life went on.
I was a parenthesis in their conversations. An anecdote. An unopened beer that someone would eventually drink.
And I didn't blame them. The world doesn't stop because one person disappears. I learned that quickly.
I was just one among thousands who died every day. A statistic in a register. A name on a death certificate.
Insignificant on the scale of the universe.
XII.
Months turned into a year.
Mom made progress. Slowly. Painfully. But she progressed.
She packed my books into boxes. Donated my clothes. Turned my room into a sewing room. She needed a project. Something to distract her.
One night I saw her looking at old photos. Me as a child. Me in high school. Me at my university graduation. I was smiling in all of them. I had learned to smile well for photos.
"You were happy," she whispered. "You looked happy."
No, Mom. I just looked fine. It's not the same.
But she needed to believe it. And I couldn't take that belief away from her.
My friends uploaded photos on Instagram. Trips. Parties. Graduations. New partners. New jobs.
Lucas started dating someone. Fede went traveling in Europe. Martín got a job at a company.
The world was turning. The Earth hadn't stopped.
And I was still here. Floating. Observing. Trapped between worlds.
I got tired. For the first time in my existence—or post-existence—I just wanted to rest. Not think. Not remember. Not exist in any form.
But I couldn't. Not until I remembered.
XIII.
I flew over the city at night. It was the only thing that gave me anything resembling peace.
From above, Buenos Aires was beautiful. The lights formed artificial constellations. The Obelisco shining. The Río de la Plata reflecting the moon. Cars like blood cells flowing through asphalt veins.
I flew farther each night. First the city. Then the suburbs. Then beyond.
I found a place. A forest on the outskirts. Ecological reserve. Abandoned. Tranquil.
There was a lake. Small. Crystalline. Water so clear it reflected the sky perfectly. A liquid mirror.
I liked going there. Fish moved in slow formations. Leaves fell softly onto the surface. The wind moved the trees like a silent orchestra.
It was the only place where I thought of nothing. Where I simply existed without trying to understand why.
I wondered if this was what peace felt like. If this was the closest thing to rest I could have.
XIV.
That afternoon—if you could still call it afternoon in my state—I went to the lake again.
I approached the water. Looked at the fish. Trout. Mojarritas. Swimming without purpose. Just existing.
My reflection appeared on the surface.
But it wasn't just my face.
It was something more.
The rain on the window.
The coffee cooling on the nightstand.
The clonazepam bottle I opened slowly, as if the noise could betray my decision.
The pills. Sixteen. Counted twice to be sure.
The paper with the emergency number on my desk. 135. Three numbers. So easy. I just had to dial.
I didn't do it.
Instead, I sat on the bed. Looked at the bottle. The white pills in my hand.
I thought of Mom. How I was going to destroy her. How she would never fully recover.
I thought of my friends. Of Lucas asking me, "Are you alright?" and me changing the subject.
I thought of all the conversations I never had. Of all the help I never asked for.
I thought: "I can still stop. I can call. I can ask for help. There is still time."
But the other part of me—the tired part, the part that had been awake too many nights, the part that was exhausted from thinking—whispered:
"Or you can rest. Finally. Without noise. Without pain. Without thinking anymore."
And that voice won.
I swallowed the pills. One by one. With the warm coffee. Methodically.
I lay down. The sheets smelled of Comfort fabric softener. The smell of my childhood.
The rain kept falling. The city kept breathing. Mom was still working at the hospital, unaware that her son was saying goodbye in silence.
I closed my eyes.
"Winter," I thought. "My favorite season. Honest. Cold. Real."
The decision felt like surrender and liberation at the same time.
I didn't want to wake up.
And I didn't.
The reflection in the lake gave everything back to me. Every second. Every thought. Every pill.
The one who had killed me was me.
XV.
I stood motionless in front of the lake. Seeing my reflection. Seeing the truth.
There was no horror. No denial. Just a strange calmness. Like when you finally understand something you always knew but refused to accept.
The voice returned.
"You know now."
"Yes."
"How do you feel?"
"Tired."
"I know."
"Can I rest now?"
"Yes."
"Is she going to be okay? My Mom."
"Eventually. Not now. Not soon. But eventually. She will carry your loss for the rest of her life, but she will learn to live with it. She will move forward. For you. Because that is what you would have wanted her to do."
"And my friends?"
"They will remember you. They will tell anecdotes about you when they are drunk. They will think of you at random moments. You will be a part of their stories. Not the biggest part. But a part."
"Is that enough?"
"There is no 'enough' in this. There is only what is."
I looked toward the city one last time. Mom would be home. Maybe sewing. Maybe looking at photos. Maybe crying. Maybe okay.
Lucas would be with his girlfriend. Fede would be planning another trip. Martín would be at his new job.
The world kept going. It always does. And that was fine.
"Ready?" the voice asked.
"One more question."
"Go on."
"Did I do wrong?"
The voice took a moment to reply.
"It is not my place to judge. But what I can tell you is this: you were suffering in a way you couldn't explain. And in that moment, you felt there was no way out. That doesn't make you weak. It makes you human."
"But is there a way out? For others like me?"
"Always. There is always a way out. You may not see it. You may not believe it. But it always exists. The problem is that when you are in the deepest pit, you cannot see the ladder. But it is there."
"I wish I had seen it."
"I know, Mateo. I know."
The light came. Not like in the movies. Not dramatic. Not bright. Just soft. Warm. Like the winter sun through the clouds.
I took a step toward it.
Then another.
And for the first time since I could remember—since I was eight and came home to an empty house, since I was fifteen and wondered why existing seemed so difficult, since I was twenty-two and understood that my brain worked differently—my mind fell silent.
There were no questions. No thoughts stampeding. No past. No future.
Only present. Only peace.
Finally, I rested.
Epilogue
Buenos Aires, Two Years Later
Mateo's mother walked into the corner café. The same one where he used to study on Sundays.
She ordered a cortado. She sat at the back table. The same one where Mateo sat.
She opened her purse. Took out a photo. Mateo smiling. Graduation. Seemingly happy.
Two years. Seven hundred thirty days. And it still hurt. But it was no longer a pain that paralyzed her. It was a pain she had learned to carry.
A pain that had become part of her. Like a scar. Always there. But no longer bleeding.
She drank her coffee. Looked out the window. People walked by. Life went on.
"I wish you had asked for help," she thought. As she thought every day.
But she knew Mateo couldn't. Or didn't know how. Or was too afraid.
And now she lived with that non-answer answer.
She put the photo away. Finished her coffee. Left the bar.
Winter had arrived again. Her least favorite season now.
But she kept going. One day at a time. Because that was what Mateo would have wanted.
And because there was no other option but to continue.
A Note from the Author
For those reading this who recognize something of your own darkness in these words:
Winter is not permanent. Spring always comes.
If you cannot believe it now, that is okay. Let someone else believe for you until you can do it alone.
The ladder exists even when you do not see it. Ask for help. Please.
Your life matters. Your pain is real. Your story does not end here.