The fall: innocent objects that kill us

January 13 was World Day to Fight Depression, which, according to the WHO, affects 320 million people, 18% more than a decade ago. Falls, also according to the WHO, cause the death of 684,000 people each year and in 2021, according to the National Institute of Statistics, they were the second cause of unnatural death in Spain (10 people per day), only surpassed by suicides. They are the first external cause of death in the country (in 2022 they registered an increase of 5.6% compared to 2021). Depression, falls, suicides: the numbers are high but we are safe. These are things that happen to others, more fragile, more unhappy than us. Weeks ago, a huge storm with winds of 100 kilometers per hour broke out in Buenos Aires. I had just arrived home earlier, after a happy night. I was sleeping when, at three in the morning, the wind woke me up, terrifying like the squawking of a monstrous bird. Dazed, I jumped out of bed to close the windows but got tangled in the sheets and fell. I hit my head on the floor. I heard “crack.” My neck was deformed in a horrible twist and I was shipwrecked in a blinding whiteness. I stood up as best I could, dazed. I trembled through the house, which trembled under the dominion of that invisible beast, wondering if I was really dead, lying on the floor of the room. Shortly after, two neighbors rang the doorbell: the cement lid of a water tank had blown off like a frisbee, had embedded itself in the door of our building and had destroyed it. Death can lurk at the door of the house, in a bed, the morning after a happy night. In the false security of our rooms, innocent objects kill us and, if they don't kill us, they remind us that we can all, sometimes, fall.