Angels

“Have you ever felt so alone and hopeless that with just the wrong step you entire world begins to unravel? Begins to unravel so much that it gains speed, falling apart before you even have time to realize what has happened? Has the freefall that accompanies ever become so powerful and overwhelming that the hope of ever finding light again in the darkness is just too much?

For the longest time in my life I have been on this freefall, the world of earth and sky and happiness a painful memory. After long your entire existence becomes painful. You lungs cannot breathe the air, you eyes seal shut, and your soul becomes cold and dead. The weight of your hopeless life so overwhelming that the only escape is one of death.

My life has been in a constant state of flux, being yanked back and forth between seconds of joy and eternities of sorrow and grief and pain. A world where there is no happiness, only the cold darkness that continually eats at your soul, taking away bit after bit until you feel as though you have nothing left. Chaos and sorrow around every corner.

Until one day when it all changed. The world around me began to reform, build itself. I had ground underneath my feet and I was unable to walk. I had air to breathe and with each breath my lungs burned. I had sunlight to see with and to gaze up into instead of all consuming darkness. There was warmth, a warmth I had never experienced before, something so pure and untainted that it felt as if only a higher being could have created something so perfect.

I was given a blanket, a blanket to hold onto whenever it was cold, whenever the world was far too much to bear on my own. My love gave me the blanket as was always there, making sure that I was warm and that I knew she was there.

The world around me was so beautiful and full of life. Glorious sights and sounds from all walks of life being thrown at me ever single moment of my day instead of the constant darkness acting as a vacuum to life. IIt as exciting and invigorating and so real that I could hold onto it. A world where the cold was nothing to even think about, a world where love warmed all and was all anyone needed.

But much like the seasons, spring and summer began to change into fall and winter. The warmth of life became colder as more time passed. The sights and sounds becoming fewer and harder to find as the leaves fell to the ground, acting as a suffocating blanket to the world. I too grew cold and pull on the blanket harder to keep myself warm.

I continued to pull on the blanket as it grew colder and colder until it suddenly ripped. The threads that had held it together came undone and unraveled and fell to the ground. The ground spilt open from underneath me, the buildings collapsed onto the ground; the sights and sounds of the world disappeared and grew silent as each thread of the blanket fell off of the body.

I returned to the freefall, darker, colder, and harsher than ever before. My heart was tattered and destroyed as my mind played over and over and over and over and over again what had happened to my world and why it had fallen apart. No matter how many apologizes were spoken, none where heard. The darkness had returned and the world as gone, nothing but the emptiness of the fall.

Expect for the noose. The noose offered me an escape, an escape from it all, a way to rid myself of the darkness, an end to my pain. As I reached for the noose it was quickly pulled away, I heard the voices of friends and family, all meshed together expressing their concerns and love for me, yet the darkness held its hold on me as the noose floated away, my hope for an end to this pain taken from me.

Until one night, I called out a friend’s name, and someone responded and pulled me away from the darkness just enough so that I could see the light

There I sat and there she laid, the darkness of the freefall being taken away and replaced by a hazy, marijuana high induced room, looking up at me with those angel’s eyes. TThere was no reason for this to happen, but for some reason, this wondrous woman pulled me away from the freefall and spent her evening talking with me. Something odd happened during that conversation, I opened up. I told this woman things that no other leaving being knows, yet I barely even knew who she was.

There I sat, opening up, telling her about everything, my sorrows, my thoughts, my opinions, all the while we sat and laid in the hazy room, far distant from the freefall that accompanies me. We spoke, I listening, I explained, we laughed, I fought my emotions, it was so very different from everything that had been happening before. TThere, this woman with an angel’s eyes spoke words of reassurance, words that made me think, and words that despite their truthfully hurtful nature, made sense.

The darkness didn’t seem as dark even though it was enveloped all around us as I looked into those eyes and opened up, the ice around the edges of my heart becoming thawed. A heart that had been broken and beaten and shattered and poisoned, yet there it was, feeling alive again. And for that night, the next day, and the very next night something bizarre began to occur to me.

The ground I stood on was shaky, yet it was there, there was no empty blackness consuming my soul as I fall eternally. The world felt loose and ready to fall apart at any moment, but none the less it was there, it was tangible. SSomething else had occurred over that moment of time where I spoke to the women with angel’s eyes.

I felt something. I felt something for another person, something I had long sense dismissed as never to happen again after all the pain I had been through and all the pain I had caused. Yet there it was, the night replaying through my mind time and time again, instead of being reminded constantly of my anguish and heartache. Instead I felt warmth in my blood and a desire to continue, to make the best of this day.

I am grateful, grateful for the moment in time when the freefall was stopped and a stranger took me aside and spent time with me. I am grateful for the opportunity to have met someone like the women with angel’s eyes as he entire presence was reassuring and calming. But most of all I am grateful for being shown that I can feel for others, that I will not spend the rest of my life thinking about my guilt and heartache and remorse for my actions and how my world fell apart and the cold darkness of the freefall returned. For that, I am grateful.

The world around me shakes and wobbles yet becomes more concrete with each passing moment. The cold remains but I bring a jacket to help keep it at bay until I can once again find another blanket to wrap around my shoulders. Hopefully the next blanket I find will keep me just as warm as the previous and I won’t have to pull so hard as I had in the past. I’m hoping I’ll next have to pull so hard again to stay warm.

It still hurts as I stumble across the threads of the love I had once known, threads of the blanket blew in the wind as though it had never been there. It hurts still to open up to some and learn about the relationships some have with others, how the times you have lost during the freefall are gone and shall never be made up. There is hope though, as shaky as the ground still is, I find some paths are more solid that others, some buildings stronger and warmed to the strong cold winds that threaten the tear it all down once again.

Whatever you may believe is up to you, as for myself I am always looking, but I have come to hold one very solid belief. There are angels among us, be them of supernatural existence or of mortal blood, they exist. Some you find and are around for your entire lives, others cross your path once and forever change something about you. I believe in angels because I have met two in my life. The first was an angel I would spend the rest of my life with, the one who first saved me. The second angel laid there on a bed, looking up at me with her eyes as I spoke, reassuring me that there was hope still. I believe her, as hard as that is.”