Angels In Darkness

Loud screams, piercing squeals, and unsolicited attacks. This is the world we live in. Once upon a time, I loved that world. However, it now seems to have shifted altogether. It's almost as if the line between expected and unexpected has vanished.

I remember sitting on the bed when I was a little boy. My parents were watching the news, and I kept looking up at the television screen to see what it had to say. Suddenly, the stereotypical “Breaking News” came on. I recall my mother and father both sat up straight in their bed. Soon we saw a monolith on fire because a bird lost its wings. The people on the news zoomed in to show ants plummeting to their deaths. In that moment, it felt like a part of my innocence was gone.

No. This world is fleeting. I am constantly clinging to a vague source of light. Below my feet I see damnation. To my right, the taunting tortures of life. On my left, the beyond nightmarish REM that I know awaits me when I fall asleep. What has my life become if not but a dare to live and suffer?

When I was in middle school, I remember kids would attack me on the way to school. I remember a time I couldn't get up after an attack. My vision was blurry, I was numb from an excess of pain, and my only solace was that all the pain could end if I died right then. But this was not the way. A girl, who I only knew for a week, saved me and walked with me to school. The angel was openly herself. The angel shed her light on my need to emerge from the drab excuse for what fits into the puzzle of society. I remember at the end of the week, when my girlfriend, Cesaley, called me faggot. Angel got into a fight with her and won.

My life has no meaning if meaning is not taken from moments out of the darkness. For in that darkness there are lights, unseen by those who lack the understanding.

As painful as migrating was, I somehow had nothing to hold onto in our former home. No laughs, loves, nor turtle doves were offered. Nobody there ever truly made me laugh except one. It was a masquerade for acceptance. Nobody there ever truly gave me love except one. It was an attempt to convert what lay behind my cloak. Nobody there ever offered a turtle dove except one. It was constant opposition to who I was. The only person who shed any light at all was my angel. Unfortunately, nobody in the pit ever saw her again after the one week I knew her.

Walking out into an endless void of fear and foreign affairs, it was always a tedious feat for me. I’d pay attention to my surroundings. The signs and synchronicities in the realm would tell me of something nearing. Bad and good don’t matter anymore. It’s every creature for his or herself and the world is a clusterfuck of chaos. Damned people, they don’t walk to their grave. They run to their doom.

Present day is no better than the past. Victims seek refuge from war and devastation. Mass exoduses are refused sanctuary, leaving them to suffer more victimization. All this due to a world run by fear and paper and sinful greed. Relentless antagonists, weak protagonists, and the oblivious bystanders make up this dystopian discord. It’s a mess and yet it’s my mess. I’m stuck between existence and depravity.

How I miss the days of my early childhood where I too was oblivious, ignorant of all the things that happen in this world. At the same time, I know that no matter what age or mentality I ever had, I always had curiosity and the craving for forbidden knowledge. I would have found out eventually. My innocence was nothing short of a temporary veil that could be pierced at any moment by the estranged blade of reality.

To this day, the one thing that keeps me going is the passion for those lights. Those rare and fleeting lights that emerge once in a long while to show us the others. These rays of sunshine in the darkness are like a hint of Valhalla in the pits of Helheim. My angel was one of these lights. But I often wonder if it was real or if I will ever encounter anyone like her again.

Depression, anger, frustration, and overall emotional deprivation have riddled my life with sorrows. I remember, however, my angel told me that I was two-faced. Looking at her with offense, I asked her what she meant. She leaned forward, tilted her head, and whispered in my ear saying, “You are a ray of sunshine with an eclipse on the horizon. You are happy but sadness awaits. You are humble but capable of pride getting the best of you. You are scared but have untapped courage that is clawing at the surface. You are human but you lack the realism to see what being human can be.”

As shocked as could be expected, maybe even more so, my eyes met hers in awe of what a being sat before me. My hands trembled. Then for a moment, she seemed to be invisible. She appeared in the same spot with the same look and the same smile. I was questioning my sanity after that. That was on the last day I ever saw her.

As I work my way toward getting by and strive for mere existence, I pray to all the deities I can think of in hopes I will see my angel again. My love is strong yet weak. My heart is half empty yet half full. My life is neither here nor there. I just exist as a broken cog in the sea of broken cogs that make up the distorted societal machine. That is, until the end of last week.

It was early morning when I woke up and stared at the ceiling for a few moments before going over to the window. My body was a furnace. The air was dry. My mind was numb, and my heart was heavy. Looking to the bed, I admired my sleeping lover. His skin was a beautiful ebony tone. His hair was short but clean. His lashes were long and relaxed. When he would breath, I could hear a faint snort on occasion that made me smile uncontrollably. Suddenly, I felt like I wanted to be more for him. Following this feeling was a question. Have I found another angel? The light inside him is kindling for the light inside me. My heart beat faster and jumped a few times. My stomach, queasy with the influx of emotions. Life isn’t so bad.

Although chaos may wreak havoc on my life regularly, there is always a ray of light that enters at the start of a new leaf turning. It is these moments that let us rise from the ashes. I know that now. Even though my internal deprivation is chronic, I can finally see that I never lost my angel. I just found a new one. Insanity produced my first angel as a fantasy. Love has allowed my new angel to be a reality. I am my own angel.