Nov 14, 20215 min read

The Girl From Elsewhere - Part II

Psyche

I am unconscious, floating in darkness for a long while. Barely any thoughts interrupt the stillness of my mind. I faintly remember the events that led to here, like some distant incident that happened long ago... But I can’t seem to focus on them. I just enjoy the floating sensation, the weightlessness of my body and emptiness of my mind. The insignificance of it all. I do not know if I am dead or not, and frankly, I do not care. It does not matter. Nothing matters. This is what true peace feels like.

Everything else is all so trivial and of no important consequence. My death, or life, is a negligible event in the magnitude of our universe. Grand, beautiful scheme of things. Life goes on. It finds a way.

I am simply savouring where I am right now. I am ageless, immaterial, ethereal, ever present… I drift in The Timeless, The Infinite. Even perhaps The Afterlife, if I did indeed die. If I didn't, then maybe I am just floating in the beauty of my own mind, resting and recovering, until perchance, one day, I come back to the living world. Or maybe I was never fully alive to begin with and my soul is travelling, searching far and wide for my next host. Reincarnation? I am familiar with the term. I like the idea of it. It would explain the well of innate knowledge I seem to have before even being born, the flashing memories of a vaguely distant previous life. I would have had a life, maybe many others, before now. I revel in the idea for a while. When I move on, I consider the possibility of my death again. Maybe my physical body is buried, or incinerated, or vaporised, or frozen, or eaten away by time or animals. Maybe now, I have become nothing, joining the infinity of the nothings occupying every inch of space in the universe. Or, maybe, I am just sleeping, peacefully. Well, not sleeping… A deep, profound slumber… Hibernating? That fits what my wandering mind theorizes but it is not the correct term. Not exactly… Almost. Any of these eventualities satisfy and suit me. I am content in being whatever I might be. The events which brought me here, whether I died or not, whether I was being born or just awakened, or whether it is all something completely different than I expect, it is all unimportant.

I am floating in the darkness for now, and I guess there is nothing I can do to change that. So I enjoy the lulling of the emptiness, the comfort of the oblivion. It is like nothing exists but me. Or it is like I, myself, am non-existent. It is the freest I have ever felt.

I have been drifting in my incorporeal state for an eternity that only lasts an instant, when I notice my thoughts have colour. Sparkles of shimmering colours, like a silent firework. At first a timid and faded stream of gleaming twinkles, turning stronger and brighter, bigger and faster, dancing around me. I am dazzled by the beauty of it, and I instantly recognise them as my thoughts, my creations, a materialisation of who my being is, of who I am. I admire the scene in awe. I gleefully realise that I am observing something, without even having eyes. It is my mind’s eye that is gifting me with the vision of my imaginings. I swim in delight in the powerful wonder and delicate splendour of what I am experiencing. I would giggle in ecstasy if I had a voice, and I see my joy shooting out in a splendid stream of cascading golden sparkles. I almost feel it land on my non-existent face, showering me in the colours of my delight.

I feel something else, suddenly. And the shock of it dissipates my thoughts, and with that my beautiful companions are gone. I grieve them hopelessly for a split second but my dread is short-lived as my attention is turned to the tingling feeling. It is both the sensation and its location that puzzle me. A warm, squeezing sensation, an interruption of which I am not the perpetrator. I feel it on my left hand. My hand which, only an instant ago, was non-existent. With the physical experience of it, I witness its materialisation, at my side. I know it is my left hand but it doesn’t look like a hand. It only glows bright red with the touch it just sensed.

I am breathless in bewilderment. I am immediately aware that I can hold my breath. In what I thought was an immaterial body, I shouldn’t be able to feel my extremities, nor intake a sharp breath of surprise. I wait for something else to happen, stunned.

So my wishful dream of a life after death, a life for the soul without a body, the freedom I experienced… it was indeed only that: a dream.

I am alive, I am certain of that now. I am sleeping. Lying somewhere I do not know, watched over by someone I do not know either, the owner of that squeezing hand, unable to come any closer to my conscious self than I am right now.

I am painfully aware of my cruel vulnerability. I feel trapped in my motionless body, incapable of even attempting to move. My consciousness is limited. I cannot hear anything from the outside world, my only connection to it, that hand which holds mine.

In a panic frenzy, I search the corners of my mind for an exit, a lifeline to drag myself back to the real world, the physical one. But everywhere I turn, blackness surrounds me. The same which at first comforted me and made me feel so safe, now oppresses me and sends me spiralling.

I thought I was free. I thought I had no attachment or future that awaited me. I thought I was at peace. I was wrong. I let my guard down. Being in that comatose state does not bode well for my future. But why am I so panicked right now? I think hard. I do not know what to expect. The eternity of being trapped in my own mind was peaceful and blissful as long as I was not aware of the cage. Now I see the bars, I only long to fly away. Focusing on the why gives me something else to devote my attention to. And I realise I have slowly calmed down.

I look at that glow where my left hand should be. The sensation is soft and warm. It irradiates care and concern. Love even. Though I feel I have never met the person it belongs to, I know it is the same person whose voice was echoing through my liquid nest after it found me. She is the one who has been monitoring me, maybe even got me through my birth. And now she stands vigil over me, holding my hand and with it trying to guide me back to her reality.

But I am stuck here. In my own reality. And I do not know the way out of the maze of my locked-up mind.

Original story & Copyright by Julia Mesrobian