The Realization

It happened suddenly, I don’t remember how it happened or what I was doing when the event took place. All I know is that I no longer reside in my body. The weight of pain that was persistently reminding me of all the misery in my life is gone. The feeling that I will never be happy again is no longer there. All I can perceive is a sense of relief. I am aware of the fact that I have no more worries or responsibilities tying me down.

I find myself taking a walk. And all around me I see shapes and colours washing away and forming into scenes. Is this heaven?

I walk into a hospital room. I see a familiar looking woman on the bed holding a baby. The woman looks like she is holding the most precious thing on Earth. Beside her is a man, smiling with tears in his eyes. I feel like an electric current is flowing through my mass-less self. It’s my parents, I realize with a jolt. I try to talk to them but they can’t hear me. I try to touch them, they can’t feel me. Maybe I’m in hell I thought, to be in such close proximity to my parents and not being able to communicate with them. It dawns on me that this was perhaps the time when I was newly born. Am I travelling through time, or just through my memories?

The colours around me fade away and reconstruct into an apartment. Out in the balcony I see my parents feeding me cereal and showing me the moon. I remember that as an adult, I was always fascinated by the moon, its beauty, its loneliness and its silence. Perhaps this was where it all started.

The next scene shows me begging my mother to allow me to hold a little bundle. Inside that bundle is a new born child. I see her giving the baby to me. I remember looking at that baby and thinking that I was holding the most perfect thing in the universe - My baby brother. It was the happiest moment of my life.

Now the scenes fly past me; sleepovers with my best friends, winning prizes at school, my Principal telling my parents that they were blessed to have a child like me.

These scenes are my memories I realize.

Now the colours that materialize are of darker hues. Black and grey. I no longer am able to see anything. I can only feel. I am terrified as I am plunged into darkness. I feel heartbreak, the gut wrenching pain of betrayal, loneliness, insecurity and most of all anger.

This is not heaven or hell I think. I feel like I am stuck in purgatory. I cry out in pain. Not physical pain but emotional pain.

Out of nowhere the pain fades away into nothingness and the colours change to white. I am still blind, but it’s no longer black around me, just pure white.

Slowly I begin to see a classroom. I walk straight into it. On the table, I find a few books which I recall belonged to me in Earth. I touch the novel and as soon as I touch it a sensation spreads along me, I can experience the joy I felt while reading it, the mystery and the suspense.  I touch my diary and I can detect the sense of creativity, the passion and the dreams that I put into writing each story in it. I walk towards the chalkboard, and the minute I touch it, I remember the first class I taught. I remember the kids smiling.

All of a sudden the classroom vanishes and I observe that I am floating somewhere in space. I see the stars and feel the universe welcoming me into itself.

Then in a flash of a second, everything vanishes and I am pushed back into Earth. I am floating on the ocean, towards the shore. Even though I am no longer a person, I still marvel at the beauty and the rhythm of the sea. As I reach the sea shore I hear a child calling me. She is shouting at me to help her. She is bleeding all over and crying that somebody hurt her. I rush towards her trying to comfort her. But I am unable to wrap my arms around her owing to the fact that I have no mass. I cry out in despair.

I feel like someone punched me in the face and I wake up with a start in a hospital bed. I feel my heart beating. I am still alive. I must have been in a road accident. I always thought my life made no difference to anybody. It has taken this encounter with death to know that my life matters, not to everyone, but to the few who matter to me. My life matters to that little girl who called out to me. I will help her. I will live. My life is worth living.  It’s all going to be okay, because I am ALIVE. 




*A note from the author: This article is pure fiction.