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Chapter 14

 From Within

Part 1: Brooding

I met a little girl today. In a very serious voice she told me she was collecting evidence the world was conspiring against her. By now she had quite a few items, all dated and explained in great detail; where exactly she had found them, the time and date for when she had found them, and short descriptions as to how they proved the plot against her. Hadn't it been for her young age and the strange thing she said it would've sounded like a professor or something talking about a study she was conducting. For some reason the little girl let me look at her evidences and the register enclosed with them. None of it made any sense to me, but I did understand that this was all very important to her; what she showed me was a crucial part of the world she was living in.
          Carefully I went through all her findings, one by one, trying to see what she was seeing, trying to find the sense in them she had found. Trying to grasp the bigger picture they built up in her eyes. All the while I went through her items she looked at me with a steady, observing gaze, her eyes searching for hallmarks of betrayal in me. It felt like she tried to find out if I was in on the conspiracy, or, if I was the only one in the world she could trust. She didn't reveal any of the feelings that must've been rupturing inside of her at that moment, she just looked at me with her serious, unyielding and exploring eyes. She was studying me and I felt she noticed my every reaction as I took part of her findings. I didn't know how to react, I couldn't understand any of it, but I continued going through her items, gently, cautiously, trying my very best to comprehend, trying to get what it was she wanted to show me.
          As I did this I felt her earnestness and her utter aloneness, and how she held back on hope that she'd finally met someone she could rely on. This feeling grew in intensity by the second, and soon it was so strong within me it felt like it filled every fibre of my heart, body and soul. It was the strangest thing but there, through that feeling, in that feeling, it was as if a gate had opened between us and all at once I understood the items: I could see straight into her world.
          I could see her, living a brutally clear and yet so heavily veiled existence. To her the real world was a cold, desolate place. She was convinced there was no protection to be found anywhere, no one to hold her and comfort her when she was feeling small and sad. No one to console her when she was crying. In her world poison had burned away all that is loving, soft and soothing in life. Poison had taken the place of tenderness. That's what made her world so brutally clear. And that was also what made it so heavily shrouded: It was a world covered with a thick layer of fear, a world discoloured in the agonizing shade that spells abandonment – this was the world she saw, brutally clear and vivid, leaving her without any means to see what laid beneath that warped exterior.
          I felt her sadness and isolation. I felt a desperation so well hidden she didn't even recognize it herself. I felt despair holding her soul in a grip so tight she had to fight just to breath. I felt the anguish and dread that ruled her world. And I sensed a rage, lying just beneath the surface.
          In my eyes she was the cutes little thing, this girl. You know how some kids can just capture your heart in an instant? It's like they have something inside of them, a light that touches something ancient inside of you and fills that place with ... I don't know what, the word that comes for me is simply: Love. Well, she was a kid like that. And it made me wonder what had happened to her. Overall she appeared as if well taken care of. The serious expression on her face and the graveness in her voice just didn't end up with her other features. I guessed she was somewhere around seven years old, she had long blondish hair and wore a knitted yellow dress. It was hard to tell the colour of her eyes, they had a sort of multiple-colour mixture to them were the salient one shifted constantly. But, it wasn't hard to see the passion in them. It was as if she looked past your surface and into the core of your being, into the one you really are, just by glancing at you.
          In my belief the closer to being born a person is, the closer she or he is to God. When you're born, you come directly from the Kingdom of Heaven, and then, the longer you've travelled on the various paths destiny takes you, the farther away from Home you get. And you go through all kinds of things during your journey, experiences sent to you, and experiences that come from the choices you've made, experiences reminding you of your true Home, and experiences that distance you from that memory. But whatever you do and wherever your journey takes you, it's all part of a greater Cosmic voyage purposed to illumine life. And when you get to the end of your sojourn here on earth, you return to the Celestial Home you once came from, but not as the one you were when you left – you return as the one you've become. This belief of mine went through my head when I met the little girl's eyes, not in so many words but like an image, a sensation, and so I wondered why this little girl had been through so much at such a young age she was convinced the whole world was conspiring against her.
          Her gaze was filled with an outlandish blend of wretch, curiosity, love, frenzy, bliss, sadness, and charm – all parallel and unbridled, something I've never seen before. And yet it awoke a deep recognition in me. When I met her eyes it felt like a force swept away all words lying in between us. There was something about her, something that absolutely enchanted me. In split second-waves meeting with her was like meeting with a single focal point of life's every aspect. In those seconds you lost balance and everything around you just dissolved – vanished – as you got sucked into this whirl where opposites became inseparable and undistinguishable facets of one single, pure vital force.
         Overwhelmed all I wanted was to make her feel secure and confident again. Only, I had no idea how to do that. What could I say? What could I do? How was I to behave to assure her she could believe in me? In my mind I tried to find a way when suddenly and unexpectedly she smiled at me. A subtle, barely visible little smile, that to me felt like the most wonderful of gifts had been bestowed upon me. She didn't say anything – she didn't have to – I could tell by that smile alone she had decided to trust me and rely on me. I began asking her some questions about the items in her chain of evidences. I hadn't done it before since I was afraid that to her questions could equal doubts. But now I could ask her upfront what they meant, how they were connected to each other, and most importantly, why she had collected them. Her answers, when put together, unravelled her deep dark secret. A secret so pitch black and horrifying no one could be told – or, so she had construed it in her mind. The story circled around the menace of a mysterious, uncontrollable element. She didn't know what it was, but she'd figured she was a carrier of that scary something. She had it biding inside of her, within her very soul.

continues in Chapter Fifteen...