Pinnacle

She stretched her vision across the city spreading beneath her. From that altitude she could still see people bustling around on the sidewalks, cars tailing each other on the highway like an army of ants: so busy and consumed in the microcosm of their own lives. She watched them as a curious bystander would watch an ant hill or a beehive: removed from it's seemingly chaotic yet infinitely intricate ecosystem. But did she choose to distance herself from it or did she reconcile herself to life of solitude?

There was no unambiguous way to answer that question. On the one hand she had risen through the echelons of the advertising world from a bright eyed student of design to the most coveted creative director in business. There was never a dull moment at work or a day when she woke up without feeling the energy to take on the next big client. Of course, there were days when things went horribly wrong, ideas misfired and people with mighty egos clashed like gladiators in the Colosseum. And yet through such trying situations her detached mind would conjure up some of the most fantastic ideas that would diffuse the situation and accelerate her ascent to a position her peers could only dream of. She couldn't imagine being more satisfied creatively, professionally and financially.

Even so, it was lonely up there. Most of her peers now worked as her subordinates and most of the men she had met were laid back, unambitious and immature. She was fairly old school in wanting a man to make the first move and secretly hoped that it would bring out her coy and vulnerable feminine side. Yet her public persona was that of an alpha female often repelling any self respecting alpha male from approaching her. The one time she felt that a relationship was working for her, she realized years later that she had only deluded herself in all her youthful optimism that she could entirely trust the one she loved even though they were professional competitors. Was it the bitterness and mistrust that made her detached? She could feel the pulse of a market and spin an idea that would touch the raw emotions and desires of an entire target population and yet she found it painfully difficult to feel those very emotions and desires. Was it her trade that made her an uninvolved spectator of human behavior that it almost was beneath her to exhibit those very emotions and behaviors that made her a livelihood?

She watched a happily married couple in the ocean of people below: the husband carrying his son on his shoulders and the wife scooping their second child out of a stroller. That could have been any of her numerable peers or classmates. Was she afraid of normalcy, domestication and mundaneness? Why was life so complicated for her that she did not have that simple joy of being a mother or a wife? She chided herself as the thought ran through her head. Never covet another's joy she almost said aloud. She pursed her lips as she did not want the excruciating hollowness to pour out of her being and yet she couldn't control it from brimming her eyes and blurring out her happiness.

As she watched the young family make its way through the fluid of unrecognizable faces she could feel a drop streaming down her cheek. But before it could fall into oblivion she spread out her hands and dove after it. As her feet left the comfort of being at the solitary apex she felt powerless, unable to control the speed at which she was hurtling down towards the ground. As she felt the wind rushing through her face and the building floors flying past her, the blood rushed faster to her head. Even so, there was an inexplicable calm on her face for she knew it was a happy place to be, to be able to let go of everything and still be in control. Within seconds she knew it would be over.

Below, people stopped in their tracks in horror. They were pointing and screaming in almost the same hapless way that her body seemed to fall. She quickly tugged at the parachute which broke her fall and eased her descent onto terra firma. Illegal BASE jump off the Petronas, check. Got arrested for it, check! Life wasn't that complicated after all.