Love Life (or Pinkie Pie's Heartbreak Repair Service)

Have you ever built a sandcastle on a beach before?

A really good one. One that spends most of the day to make, only for the tide to come and sweep it away, or for a careless pony to trample it by mistake.

Your life was a lavish sandcastle once. You had friends. You had money. You had a beautiful fiancé you were due to marry. But none of it lasts. Take one of those things away, and it all falls apart.

The money wasn’t even the first thing to go; it was just the first problem. As soon as you told her that you needed to keep your bits for the house you were going to buy together, her attitude changed almost immediately. It meant an end to you buying stuff on her behalf. Apparently expensive trinkets and gems were more important to her than trying to make ends meet for life after the wedding.

Ah, yes. The wedding. The worst day of your life. The day she left you at the altar and ran off with that rich stallion. Because she’d already drained you of everything you could give her, why in Equestria would she want to marry you?

Naturally, your fake friends leapt to her side of the argument, if only for the chance to get up-close and personal with her, or impress her new, richer, more popular aristocratic unicorn than you. That’s the problem with Canterlot these days; you’d get sold out in a second if it meant they’d be part of an ‘in’ crowd as a result.

Which is why you decided to start over. To drop anchor in Ponyville, buy a small house there with whatever funds you had left, and start with a clean slate. Sadly, those kind of story endings don’t exist. You were already broken-hearted and wrecked from the whole experience. Those feelings don’t just go away when you wake up in a small, empty house every morning, reminding you day after day of how you got there.

The drinking helped at first. Let you forget the situation, if only for a single night. The mornings after… not so helpful. Eventually, the drinking slipped from an occasional treat to something you needed just to get through the lonely week. And from there, to sheer necessity.

And a year of hurting and wallowing really takes its toll.

You sit in your usual thinking chair by the fireplace, tipping the usual amount of whiskey into your gullet. You call it the ‘thinking chair’. It’s more of a ‘regret and weep chair’ these days. It’s been a whole dismal year since she tore you apart, and took everything you held dear. And you still haven’t recovered from it. Sure, you’ve been putting on a brave face to anypony who asks, and the money that your family in Canterlot sends you helps, but…

…you can’t keep doing this. You can’t do this year after year, but there’s really no escape from it either. Unless you just sit there and wait to die. Perhaps the whiskey would speed that along. You take another gulp of it, lazily lifting the bottle with your unicorn magic.

No. No, you’ve been gulping it for a year straight now, and you’re still here. Time for a different approach. A more permanent ending to this roller-coaster with all downs and no ups.

Throwing yourself out of the thinking chair, you stumble forward, nearly falling flat on your face. Wow, the drink really sneaks up on you when you try to walk. Thank goodness you have four legs for keeping you upright, who knows how all those bipedal races manage it.

Now go and set yourself free. Oh, and bring the whiskey, there‘s still half of the bottle left. There we go.

*******

There’s a pony trotting down the crowded Ponyville streets, giving cheery greetings to any and everypony she sees. She loves these kind of days; sunny, but with a cool breeze drifting through the town. Not a cloud in the sky, but the breeze makes sure you don’t get hot and clammy.

As a result, ponies are enjoying the time outdoors, browsing the market stalls for treats and bargains, and chatting at Sugarcube Corner over a sundae or a milkshake. The pony makes a mental note to return there later today; she may have finished her morning shift, but the Cakes are always in need of a helping hoof, be it with the store or their kids.

She merrily skips her way past the market stalls and towards the centre of town, where a cluster of ponies have gathered around the Town Hall. Is there an event going on? Is Mayor Mare giving a speech about the nice weather? Ooh, ooh! She must be making today Weather Pegasus Appreciation Day or something, because this pony sure appreciates it!

Curiously pushing her way to the centre of the throng of ponies, she looks up to the balcony where the other ponies are pointing. And when she sees what the bustle is about, her thoughts dip from delightful to dire.

*******

“Everypony move, that stallion’s gonna jump!”

Ugh. Why is everypony in this backward town so stupid? You manage to haul yourself up to the balcony with the intent of ending it all quickly and (hopefully) painlessly, and now all these ponies are standing right where you want to land! How can they expect you to jump if they’re in the way? Idiots, the lot of ‘em.

One pony in particular, a panicking pink-and-pink pony, keeps shouting helpful tips from the ground, as if it could save you.

“Whaddya think you’re doing, Mister? That’s not safe!”

Wow, really? Honestly, you had no idea that balancing on the rails of a balcony using only your two rear legs (you couldn’t fit all four on) and holding the three-quarter-empty bottle of whiskey with your free fore-hooves could be considered unsafe.

“You really oughta get down from there! Or at least stop drinking that stuff while you’re up there!”

Oh, she did not just ask you to stop drinking your whiskey, did she?

“Hey, it’s the first drop of this stuff that got me wasted, lady!” you shout back, “No harm in the last drop!”

Speaking of last drops, you sure are taking your time with this whole ‘ending it all’ business. You’d hurry it up, but the crowd is still in the way.

“But you’re gonna fall!” she kindly points out. No manure, Sherclop.

“If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to test that theory!” you shout in retort. nearly slipping off the balcony, but regaining your balance at the last moment.

“Do a flip for extra points! Try and land on your neck!” a stallion in the crowd pipes up. Oh great. Hecklers at your own curtain call.

“Shut it, Sharpquill, you jerk!” the pink pony scolds him, “Can’t you see that’s the last thing we need right n-”

She stops mid-sentence, interrupted by the sudden and unusual twitching of her fluffy tail.

“No…” she looks up at you with a look of horror, then back to her quivering tail, then back to you, “Nonononono! NO!”

And with that, she looks around desperately for… something, and shoots off like a panic-powered rocket. What a strange girl…

At that moment, a gust of wind throws you off balance. You stumble, and try to place a rear hoof back on the rail. In your inebriation, you miss.

Your rear hoof starts to fall. And the rest of you falls with it.

Your eyes sting from the speed as you plummet, the whistling of the wind drowning out every sound but the occasional scream from the crowd you had attracted. Your stomach tightens into knots. It’s all a rush, with no time to think or regret. Only time to scrunch your eyes shut and wait for the ground to-

Boing!

And suddenly you get the feeling you’re travelling upwards again, if only for a second. Then the falling sensation again.

Boing.

You finally land on what feels like canvas. You chance opening a weary, delirious eye at your surroundings, whether it’s the good afterlife or the bad one. Instead, you’re met face-to-face with the wide-eyed pink pony who disappeared not a few seconds ago.

“Phew! That was a close one!” she pants, mopping the sweat from her brow, “Don’t do that falling-off-things thing again, Mister! I should really start stashing trampolines around here, I hadda fetch this from outside the Carousel Boutique!”

Looking down, you find yourself on said trampoline that had somehow appeared as you were falling. The pink girl must have brought it from somewhere. You look back up to the highest balcony of the Town Hall. You just fell from that height and survived. And now you feel sickeningly dizzy from the idea of it. You probably just need another swig from… wait, where is it?

“Tell me,” you politely ask your life-saver as your vision blurs, “Did my whiskey survive?”

“Uhh…” she checks the mess of glass and liquor that lies shattered on the ground, “No.”

“Well, nuts to that.”

What a fine thing to say to the mare who saved your miserable life. How very Canterlot of you.

Unfortunately, the rest of today is lost to you, thanks to the alcohol rotting your think-pan. You can’t remember it. Memory fuzzy. Scene missing. Please fast forward to the next morning to continue.