Angel of Eternity

Alone. Forgotten. Fruitless. Disheartened. Suicidal. Jaded. All words that describe me perfectly, to the letter, that have for nearly seven long years. I longed for a normal life, like all the other kids in school had; a life devoid of constant crying and pain and sadness, fear, feeling unwanted, all negative emotion, a life filled with only juvenile happiness and tranquility; a life in which I could make new friends without continuously worrying about whether they saw me merely as a tool to use and dispose of.

My mind, my ego, ripped and torn to shreds. My soul, twisted, empty, nothingness. In my life, no one. Delight? Joy? Serenity? Unheard of. Love? No sane person would, could, love a useless wench such as myself. Impossible. I did not even love myself, or like myself at all, for that matter. In fact, I hated myself with a passion. That loathing caused me to wonder why I had ever had the so-called privilege of experiencing life in the first place. Then I figured, stop wondering and get to doing something about it. For the first time in my life, I unhesitantly planned my own death at the naïve age of nine. Unfortunately for nine- year-old me, Christmas would soon arrive, bringing a tall, beautifully green, the colour of emerald and jade, multi-colour-lighted tree, a real live tree too!, and colourful sparkly decorations and joy and big bow-tied presents swathed in shininess. That joy in the air, almost suffocating, and the radiating cheerfulness of my family affected me in all my naïveté as well, remedying me of my thoughts of self-demise, for a short while, anyway.

After that while passed, however, I fell back into the embrace of despair. I seldom slept without crying my broken heart out to summon uneasy slumber, and I seldom woke without feeling my pillow saturated with the warm wetness of my nightly lament, riddled with salt, only to shed more tears more upon waking. Once again I longed for the sweet kiss of death, but solace continuously refused its presence. At the age of eleven I found a good friend in a small, old, wooden pocketknife belonging to my father. From the moment I pressed the short, cool blade to my skin, I loved it. The epitome of euphoria, the neat sting as the blade sliced the skin apart, exposing the vein, the sharp intake of breath, the thick crimson tears flowing freely from my wrists. I had found my release, and pleasure in it. Only one single thing kept me from cutting deep enough to deliver a fatal blow: a new addition to our already large family. My sister, Stephanie, gave birth via caesarian section to a beautiful baby girl in the early evening on the second day of July in the year of our lord two thousand two. I decided that very evening that I would use my newfound love for her, for both of them, to ward off my depression.

This worked for only eight short months before I began to isolate myself even worse than before. I built mental walls, steel reinforced mental walls at that, against the entire world, including my own family. I would not let anybody in, let anyone get to know my personality or anything about me. Why should I? They would only use me, abuse me, deceive me, bend me to their wills, just like everyone else had done all my life. I refused to endure that unbearable torment any longer. After eleven long years I’d had enough. I told myself, somehow managed to convince, that I could survive just fine with my own lonesome self, that I did not need anyone or anything to help me live my life. Nobody ever said, or even suggested, anything to contradict those thoughts, so how should I have known the valid truth?

Upon my enrollment into high school, I forced myself to put on a show of happiness. I acted carefree, like I had the perfect life, like I didn’t have to worry about anything at all. But I had my off moments. Moments when the depression and sadness would seep through, no matter how unwelcome, how unwanted. Whenever people asked me what had gotten me down or made me sad, I just smiled facetiously and claimed nothing. Little did I know, people could see right through my façade like an open transom into my soul. My falsified positive attitude began to alter my true outlook and I found myself experiencing genuine bliss occasionally.

Truly told, I gained a few companions, not quite friends, a very select few, notwithstanding the strain I forced myself to endure to appear uncaring and cold. The addition of those few fine people gave me slightly more reason to live, but not nearly enough to keep me alive for long. But little did I know at the time, it lengthened my life by long enough to find eventual happiness. Once again, at the tender age of fourteen, I premeditated my own death, every aspect, from the precise method by which I would die to what jewelry I would wear and how it would be positioned, and even the day and moment in time, according to the lunar calendar. I never got the chance to meet the Sacred Reaper, though, because someone else saved my pitiful excuse for a life first.

I would never have anticipated to fall in love at first house-visit and find a solid-as-stone purpose to my life, a crystal-clear reason for existence. And I certainly had no idea that I had done the same for him. The influence of Destiny had no opportunity for competition. There in the vast and rather frightening depths of my own personal darkness, I found someone living, dying, wandering as desperately and aimlessly as myself, and he shined brilliantly, flickering ever so slightly, like a candle’s flame in my now-whole, but still dark, heart. The angel of my eternity.