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Faulking Around - Nov 12, 2006 - Printable Version
- Falling Upward....
by Mark Faulk
There are moments.....moments in life.....moments in time.....moments where life and time converge into one swirling mass of emotion.....emotion so overwhelming that it threatens to consume you.....to swallow you up whole and leave only static electricity in its wake. I can only describe it as the sensation of being launched into space without the cocoon of a spaceship.....bare, naked, and exposed to the pressure of the universe all poured into you at once.....pushing, pulling, threatening to explode and implode your entire being simultaneously. Falling upward.
Even breathing is a monumental task, you have to will your heart just to continue beating, the slightest loss of concentration seems as if it could be the end of you. Suffocation is more than a passing thought, it is a distinct possiblity.
Think of the irony.
"He (or she, or both) suffocated in a room full of air."
It's like drowning on dry land.....falling to your death on solid ground.
Dying of suffocation in a room filled with air.
I realized this evening that there are things that affect us that we have absolutely no control over, and I'm not talking about concrete, mundane things like events or circumstances. No, this is something far more ethereal than that, something most people couldn't.....or wouldn't.....or wouldn't want to.....understand.
Someone thinks about you on the other side of town (or vice versa).....on the other side of the country.....on the other side of the planet.....on the other side of life.....and you feel their thoughts. Someone is hurting, and you cringe from the pain. Someone is longing for you, and you for them, and you can't tell where one begins and the other ends.
Sometimes you think that it's only you, and then you just feel crazy, as if you're creating this sensation out of thin air, or worse yet, inside your own obsessed mind. But somewhere deep inside you you know that you're not alone, that this is a feeling that entered you from without, and besides, you can feel yourself in them as well.
Sometimes it's so bad that you fear only death will release you from the feeling....and then you realize.....to your horror and relief.....that even death won't free you, that you are so inextricably connected to that person that even in death, one or the other of you, or more accurately both of you, will find each other.
And haunt each other again.....or rather continue to haunt each other without missing a beat.
It also occurred to me tonight that this is what lost souls are. People who, even in death, can't escape that feeling.....that longing.....that connection.....that both lifts them up and collapses in around them at the same time.
Falling upward.
And so they are earthbound by their inability to let go, they are twin souls....two molecules that were once connected that were for whatever reason.....whatever cruel cosmic twist of fate.....torn asunder by circumstance.
I've been talking lately to someone who lost their twin soul decades ago, to tragic circumstances, and I can feel their torture. It's a quiet, dignified torture, one that they've borne with dignity and grace....but torture nonetheless. Wait, that's not quite right....because you never lose your twin soul, even in death. You just lose the ability to pick up the phone and call them....to see them sitting across from you....to touch them.
Only those who have been there can relate to what another "tortured" person is going through on a continual basis, which I guess gives other lost souls a connection of sorts too....a secret society that requires no ritual or secret handshake. A secret society that can be confirmed with a single shared look.
Here's my hope.....no, my belief.....that those who are floating aimlessly in space, those swirling masses of emotion who are feeling the pain, the longing, the heartache of their twin souls, trying desperately to breathe, willing their hearts to beat one more time.....will find release someday. Most likely not in this lifetime, but in some future manifestation, that their souls will collide.....no, not collide.....will just melt into each other once and for all of eternity.
And that they will through some equally fortunate cosmic twist of fate become one.
Forever.
Falling upward.....together.
I like that thought, it makes it slightly easier to breathe.
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