The Lost Soul

A Story by Perrine

what it feels like losing someone, I think.

Darkness is falling today, I'm waking up to a new night, drowned in this wave of black, I wish you would come to me then, when the stars fall and the day breaks, where the world ends and my soul lays. My heart is broken to pieces, in this place where my soul still breaths, where my body lays mangled. I can hear faint whispers, see dancing flashlights in front of my closed eyes, through the thin skin of my eyelids. They are like paper veils, so small, so fragile, yet cutting me from this world I hate. Purple veins are running through them, so there is still life in me, blood pumping, yet I feel nothing but numbness, it’s like being underwater, everything is soft, smooth, you just float, float and you wish you could drown, peacefully, gently, let the fire inside you get extinguished bit by bit. It matters. Everything matters, and I wish it wouldn’t. The rest of my life is being shaped right now, but as I’m a mess, what shape is it going to take?

I can’t move, I don’t want to move, I want this darkness to swallow me, to fall into oblivion. Forget what I’ve been told before it gets too deep inside my flesh. I should open my eyes, but I don’t want to. Why should I get back to this, when I can lay here forever, half alive, half stone cold, muffled sounds and broken thoughts, why should I get back to pain, when I can live a half life? Holes, holes inside my chest, needles in my veins, they don’t hurt, they are just there, just like me, I don’t hurt anymore, I’m just here. I guess I stopped breathing cause I can’t smell this scent I used to, maybe my body just doesn’t want to, it would smell like loss if I could smell right now.

Pain, this is what life tastes like, sorrow and sadness, it’s bittersweet, you don’t like that but you don’t hate it either, you just have to swallow it. What happened to me? Life, life happened to me. Again and again. Life is a disease, it’s not beautiful, it’s not a gift, life is a punishment. I’m not a quitter, I’m not going to die to escape that life. Laying there in the darkness, my breath shallow, my brain running low, agony paralysing me, I can’t help but think that all those things are the same, they never change, they never will. I’m stuck in my own head, I feel like falling. My heart is bleeding sad songs, nightmares are haunting me, but I'm not asleep. I’m wide awake.

At least I think I am, I’m in that state where you’re faintly aware of everything going on around you, yet you’re even more aware of what’s going on inside you. This cold emptiness growing, filling you with nothingness. I’m scared to lose this sensation, yet I’m even more scared of feeling this way forever. My memory is blurry but I seem to remember that I once felt something else, I guess I once felt warm, I think I once felt fine.

Now, it is cold and dark, inside and out. The echo of the sound of my tumbling heart feels like dead leaves being stepped on, it suffers, it’s breaking, will it ever beat evenly again? If I stayed laying here, would you join me and forget the world? Maybe that’s all there is to it, find someone to lie with you and let the world aside. Breathe its air, have its water wash your face, its soil support you and its fire warm you.

I can feel snow falling on my cold skin, snowflakes melting on my face, seen from outside it would seem like I’m crying. Maybe I am though, crying silently. Silence, a deafening sound in a body where the heartbeat feels like a far away murmur. I wish I could disappear, become a part of this world I don’t belong to. I’d become a rock that looks almost like a person, grass growing around me, birds resting on my stone cold body. People would know but barely believe that I once was human, children would join here to tell ghost stories, that of a girl who once laid here and never went away, 'she died out of grief' some would say, others would say I died out of love, others again, that I’m still alive. Truth is I’ll die out of life, someday...

But not today.

My soul is coming back from the depths of my body, it feels like emerging and breathing for the first time. My eyes are fluttering, my limbs seem to recover strength, the pieces are being pulled back together, but one is missing. Without a word I’m coming back to life, not quite whole. As the sun rises with its dawn deploying its numerous shades of colours to me, I realise that I’ll never see them perfectly again. How long have I been here? It felt like a lifetime, yet it was just a night, a dark and cold night. It’s amazing how days and nights seem like metaphors of life when you take the time to put on hold your own life to observe them. When I laid down - fell down - it was twilight, the sun was retracting and a chill went through the world, the colours went darker, shades of purple fell on the trees, shadows gained place. Just like when one loses hopes and the pain starts to sink in, a little death of the heart. On the other hand, dawn is like gaining hope, this soft warmth elevating and brighter colours emanating from every object around you as the sun sets its rays on the world. See, a perfect metaphor of life, even the setting is the same, first like dawn, you’re full of hope and bright colours, then it dies out the more you grow, just like twilight, in a last explosion of colours, hope evading. The metaphor stops here. In the world a twilight is always followed by a dawn, in life though, the loss of all hopes does not necessarily implies the regaining of it. I’m not regaining that part of me I lost, just like ashes are blown away by the wind, it’s gone and not coming back. It’s amazing how life can take new meanings, it’s incredible how fast one can realise that there’s nothing much to it. You know that scene in the movies where the villain is putting people’s lives in jeopardy and they always try to fight and beg and find any way to survive? Most of the time what comes to my mind is ‘what’s the point?’ Would I fight? And the worst in that is that most of the time I’d answer ‘no’, not that I want to die, just that I don’t want to fight for a life like this. It kind of answers my question though, the point is to find something to fight for. Now that I’m back, I wish for one thing, going back to that state where I was floating, I was not feeling good, then again I was not feeling bad, I’m not strong enough to face that yet. I don’t wish for something to fight for, cause losing another goal would be losing that small part of me that’s still there. I’ve felt bad before, but never had a blow been that final and a cut been that deep. I’m sitting on the ice cold ground, the last snowflakes dancing in front of my eyes, I’m like them now, no will, I’ll just let myself get carried by the wind, an empty shell presenting to the world this face that fakes life. I would cry had I still any tears in me, it’s not only my body but my soul that’s empty. Empty but for one thing, sorrow. This is the moment I’ve been dreading, the time when pain would be able to leak through. All these cracks in me they haven’t totally dismantled my body but that last one lets enter more than I can contain. I feel like if I stood up I would collapse. I can feel my pulse sending blood to every part of my body, with every pulsation it’s also spreading a venom, that of sorrow and bitterness. Will this venom turn me into these people I’ve met in my life, the ones whose faces are dyed by the unmistakable shade of sadness, a veil that never goes away, even when they smile? Am I dying inside?

I’m shivering, not because of the cold even if I know I can feel it, I’m shivering because of shock, because I lost those traces of strength I still had in me. I should stand up, but I don’t want to, I wish to voice my sorrow but it seems like I’m mute. I remember the story of a woman who wasn’t allowed to speak to other people because of a curse, and one day, she was so sad she dug a hole in the ground and screamed in it, she cried her sorrow to the soil, where no one could hear her. I wish I could do the same, let that ball of dark feeling escape my chest in a painful roar, liberating me from its heavy grasp. I can’t stay here and I can’t leave. I can see the headlights of cars passing by, they all have a place to go, those people laughing and walking downtown, they seem happy, up here on the this one tree hill, I’m a castaway. The tree, it’s like me, rooted in here, petrified, some dead leaves barely attached to it, its last companions being blown away when the wind is too strong. The morning sun shines through its branches, casting their dark shadows on the ground and on me, like arms trying to grasp something, but not being able too. I tried to grasp so many things in my life, yet in my hands, they turned to sand and escaped through my closed fists, grain by grain I lost them along the way. I got a few grains left, they feel so precious to me, but this last grain I lost, it not only broke my heart but my soul too. I can’t allow myself to lose those I got left, but in losing the last one, I lost the strength I need to keep the other ones.

The sun shines in the winter sky, its pale glow hurts my eyes. In a sigh I lay back down, the frozen ground feels hard and cool on my back, I lift my hand between my glance and the sky, move my fingers. I look at the sun, try to get used to its light. It’s February, the wind blows cold and with it come frozen drops of rain, downhill the town is alive despite this cold that enters everything, houses downtown have fires burning in their sides, smoke is coming out of their chimneys.

One of the houses is mine and I should get back to it, get back to my room where I could cry myself to sleep. The thing is, to go there I have to step back into the world and I’m not ready, I doubt I’m ever going to be. Under this tree on the cold ground I’m the master of my destiny, I don’t have to cope with the words of that world that doesn’t want me. Life keeps whispering in my ears that I’m not fit for it. I reach for my pocket and take out my cigarettes, light one and stay lying here. The poisonous smoke invades my lungs, it also seems to fill the hole in my chest, in a sigh I push it all out, the smoke and particles of pain, so tiny they don’t make much of a difference. The white smoke coming out of my mouth elevates toward the sky, creating a foggy veil in front of my eyes, just like a child starring at the clouds to detect shapes, I stare at this mist, losing my thoughts in it. I’m going back, leaving this place that will become a beacon, my lost soul a blurry and distant light guiding me through life.