Seven seconds.

All it would take, is a step. Just a short sequence of signals being sent through nerve receptors causing the muscles to move your leg just shy of a foot forward, creating your entire life to flash before your eyes within seven seconds.

How can you fit a life of memories in seven seconds? How can you remember every second spent with your loved one and compress it all into just seven seconds of memories? Every happy moment, every giggle, every kiss, every skipped heart beat. Heck, you must have skipped hundreds because your heart skips every time you see them.

But, the time spent with your loved one didn't take up your whole life. The time spent with your loved one would take up a second in comparison to the rest of the life you lived. The happy memories mean nothing in comparison to the years you have spent walking the barren earth you see before you, exactly thirteen floors below you.

The first second is spent recounting your early childhood, the seemingly innocent child you were. Others would never realise what went on behind closed doors. For your friends and your loved one, their first second would be an entirely happy second filled with childish giggles and dimples pressed into red cheeked faces as they stared up at their mother, hands reaching out to grab at them to be picked up. Yours? Yours was spent recalling every argument. Yours was spent recalling the plates that smashed against the wall, the boiling hot oil that was thrown, aiming to hit someone else, but it hit your white coat as you stood in the doorway, or the time where your sister was in the bathroom, throwing up the seventeen pills she had taken while your father was on the phone with the paramedics.

The second second was spent recalling your primary school years. Your second second was spent being in the shoes of the little girl who stood before two superior beings, tears rushing down chubby red cheeks as you begged them to know what on earth you had done to cause them to loathe you so deeply that you ran home begging to curl up and disappear from the world. You remembered how they smirked at you, and simply said "You breathe."

Third second? Your third second was spent indulging in the memory of having two people who's lives were spent protecting teenagers from suicidal thoughts and getting them back on track, blaming you for a girl cutting her wrists in the toilets of the bathroom. A week later you spent your night scratching at your arms with your nails in a desperate attempt to rid yourself of the skin you owned and become a different person because the idea of living in this body in this world for a second loner caused last nights dinner to bubble up in your throat.

Fourth second. This was spent walking to a private park with your loved one, legs barely keeping you upright as you attempted to keep your composure, stumbling along the streets as two petty little boys insulted you because you had loved someone they knew before your current love. You remembered as your hands shook violently and your breathing came in short rasps, finally sitting down on a bench and grabbing your hair, choking on your own words as you explained what had happened.

The fifth second was looking at your report card. A year previous you had been an A grade student, you were studious and attended school daily because you cared about your life and future with your entire heart, holding onto the hope that it would all get better once you had finished school. Now the attendance was below 66% and the school was threatening to take your mother to court all because every day you got home and let out all your emotions through thousands of tears, hiding yourself in the confines of your bedroom as you made a mental promise to bottle up your emotions so no one had to see you in such a vulnerable state ever again.

The sixth second was spent in school, with a smile gracing your red lips. The dimples had disappeared completely from your now slender and shin cheeks, one hand above the table taking the details from the current science lecture about chemical reactions, the other hand under the table in a balled fist, the backs of your hands looking like blue rivers and streams had made their way under the parchment skin you now owned in a bid to hold back the emotions you were holding back.

The seventh second was finally the one spent with your loved one, the sounds of lazy kisses being stolen in the dead of the night, or the steady beat of your lovers heart as they hold you close and run their fingers through your hair comforting you because he had spotted the clenched fists and the thinning cheeks.

As you stepped, these seconds were running past your minds eye as your body plummeted down, down toward the concrete that was laid out below you, the cracks in the pavement becoming ever sharper.

If only you had seen that seventh second before your nerve cells had allowed the signals to run through your nervous system, causing the motor neurones to move and make your body move, stepping forward and over the edge of the building. If only you had lived long enough to replay that seventh second again.