Life is like a forest, at it’s edge, the beginning, all that meets the eye is tall trees, the brilliant sun hovering above, a green carpet of grass spread along the floor, the sound of laughter – all jabs at your positive senses to lure you into that false sense of security that in turn leads you to dash into that forest head first, away from the barebones outside, to get lost in the thick bushel of promised happiness.
As you get deeper into this forest, this forest of life, you see just how ugly it can get sometimes. You begin to question yourself, ask yourself why you chose to walk this path and not the other that seems so green and crisp that parallels it. Some parts of this forest are dead, gutted with flames of fury and pain and all that’s left are the haunting whistles of the ghosts of grief, despair and heartbreak, the sound streams through the hollow branches of the cold bare trees. Their wails are a crescendo. You walk faster as your heart begins to beat that horror-predicting melody. As you pace through this patch of purgatory you try to re-assure yourself that these fiends won’t get you, they won’t be able to lay a hand on you; you’re superman – all lies.
I thought it couldn’t happen to me, I thought that if I closed my eyes to all the signs that it was coming, that it would pass without incident – I was wrong. The trouble with my method was that closing your eyes to something doesn’t make it go away; it just gives the situation a million different new angles to come at you from, and blinds you from further thorns in the track down your path of life.
Like a pendulum guillotine manufactured by pain to sever the ties of love, the ghost of heartbreak swoops down and courses through me – I feel dead on the inside, a cancer of frigidness crawls over my heart and freezes my core that once burned with hot passionate love for another. With the flames of love doused, I was blind to the rest of the road; I couldn’t find a way out, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything... I stumbled onto the open mouth of a pit.
My foot, desperately needing, thus expecting the semi-sweet surety of solid ground was just as blind as I was and gravity yanked at my ankles with needy vengeance. My cold, dark, shell of who I was fell… I fell… I fell forever. I tried to hold onto something, but protruding branches snapped with rehearsed repetition as I clutched onto them. Gravity had its plans for me and he was sure as hell bent on accomplishing them; he made sure that I got where he wanted to send me – all the way down to the bottom.
I crashed at the base of the pit, I heard a sharp shattering sound, it was my heart breaking – the impact so sudden and unexpected, my heart so firm and cold – all the variables were set for this to happen. No matter, the pain seemed to be just the same - unrelenting. No amount of anaesthetic can deliver me.
I clattered to my feet, clutching my chest, breathing heavily, thankful that I at least survived the fall. I look around – only thick billows darkness. The soil is damp, cold and sticky. Blood, old heart fragments and tears were the weak adhesive, the components of soil made from hell’s half-acre I suppose. I tried to have a look around, see if my unaided vision could pierce the darkness to find a way out – no such luck. So I sat there waiting for my rescue.
Months pass and I keep a diligent unblinking eye to the top of the pit, the only source of light in my own little personal hell. The lighting wasn’t all that great anyway- tinted in a kind of rainy-day gray and mostly attenuated by the time it reached the bottom. Regardless, still no rescue.
My eyelids grew heavy and my sight got dim and very soon, that unblinking eye began to renounce its title. It started to take long, slow blinks… my head dipped… my eyes remained closed. There I go again, closing my eyes to the situation, at least so I thought – the pit wouldn’t let me. Upon closing my eyes and dreaming of my deliverance, I hear broken echoes of my last love oscillating through my head – in one ear and out the next, leaving tracks as they come and go. I snap my eyes open to apparitions of her, telling me the things I least want to hear, I see her laughing, living life unaffected in any way; I see her playing, going on without me just fine; I see her heart reflecting another’s image; I see her in the arms of another no sooner than I was out the door. The imagery was too much to bear, each frame in this Romantic Tragedy film built toward a nasty, gut-wrenching end and I didn’t want to see it anymore.
By this time, the vacuum of my heart sucked away at my composure, I felt so weak and broken that I was forced to lie down on the carpet of hell’s making; on the corrosive compost of ceaseless sorrow. I still hear the echoes and see the images in my dreams and nightmares, but I can do nothing about it. Just then, I felt the creeping of a sweet salty badge of emotion cradling the rim of my eye and prancing across my face onto the ground… Then another… and another… the process recycled for three straight weeks until I was literally treading the water of a shallow pool created as a result of the hurt from emotional betrayal – the good thing about it was that I didn’t have to touch that disgusting, sticky rotting soil anymore.
I’ve been trading for a while, my face bobbing above the surface, my eyes still fixed upward. I grew tired of treading and I was beginning to go under, the pit was about to reclaim its prize. I thought this was the end for me, how ironic and twisted nursery rhyme– death by the summation of all my creations.
With my eyes squeezed shut I squeezed the last drop of determination out of my soul to meet my hand to make that last motion to keep my body afloat. To no avail. I began to sink.
Thoughts of hope drained from my head, I felt the waves of submission washing over my brain, but just before these insidious waves crashed at the back of my head I felt sleek soft fingers reaching out to me, taking my hand so softly… so gently. They knew just how to hold me so that I won’t fight back or resist- not that I could have, anyway.
They were angels, all angels sent by my Father to keep me alive just a little bit longer, to stay afloat for the summer. The light radiating from their eternally pretty faces was bright and welcomed, one of the few things in my life at that point that was any good, pure and without the tattoo of betrayal hidden anywhere inconspicuously.
They kept me afloat and they still are. Thanks to them I’m still breathing. Thanks to them I am still alive. Thanks to them, there is no longer a vacuous space where my old heart once resided. Thanks to them I have a new heart. Thanks to them I am not afraid to love again.
