"So why do you keep fighting this? Why do you keep trying to be someone other than who you are? Have you lost that much faith?"
Months upon months of dreams that were empty. Dreams I could not remember. Months upon months of praying for the dreams to return. Months upon months of praying that my faith would return. Months upon months of asking her to please listen to me and give me direction. And then this week, a week of chaos and confusion, a week of grabbing myself by the balls and pushing forward, and then there it was, the kingdom of my dreams coming back live and in living color.
"Maybe you have suffered enough."
"You think?"
"Don't push it, motherfucker."
"Is that nice talk?"
"Yeah, like you haven't fucked mothers. Give me a break. Stop being a pariah."
If you had an angel like mine, you'd miss her as well. Probably. Doesn't matter. You have to be aware of the really strange caveats in my religion to understand, but the morning after a very vivid dream in which my angel took me to a large building with many rooms and left me there, I went out to buy cigarettes. In the old days it used to work like clockwork. Whenever I was down to one cigarette in the pack, a homeless person would come up to me and request it. He would then tell me something profound. At times it weirded me out.
"Spare a smoke?" asked the dude sitting outside the convenience store.
"Sure, no problem."
"Not your last cigarette is it?" he asked. I do believe he saw me go into the store and buy the pack. I was about to shake my head at him when he laughed and said, "Of course it isn't. I wouldn't take your last smoke, man."
"No problem, buddy. Here, take two."
He held them up in front of his face, looked at one and said, "This is my body." Then he looked at the other and said, "This is my blood."
I stood in stunned silence for a moment. "Do I know you?"
He laughed and walked away. You see, in the old days sharing my last cigarette was my equivalent of communion. The giving of the last smoke was a point of religious conviction. Angels are strange and fucked up creatures. They follow a code that only allows them to exist amongst us in the most desperate and down of circumstances. The meek shall inherit the earth and so forth. And they are unusually fond of cigarettes, although they never seem to actually smoke them. I followed the fucker in my car after he walked away. In the old days they always seemed to disappear, and when I followed him up the road I found no trace of him.
It could easily be called coincidence or wishful thinking, but for me to regain my faith means that I must accept a connection between my dreams returning, the voice of my angel returning and a lost soul asking me for a cigarette. That was how it ran in the old days before I sold my soul to pursue a sociopath I mistook for something else. What we believe goes a long way in determining the future course of our lives, and for the past eight months my life has been lost, empty and without purpose. The emptiness is painful. It is a reminder that psychological damage is just as real, and perhaps moreso, than any physical damage a person can suffer. I had to be reminded of that. I had to know this, to be in touch with it again, after so many years of being cocky and filled with a sense that I was invincible. If you don't get knocked down hard regularly you'll start to believe that those who are suffering have brought it all upon themselves and fall into that sick and twisted camp of "Just get over it."
The reminders of who I am and why I am here have been more concrete as well. A good friend I have known for over a decade attempted suicide a month ago. The pain she deals with is very real, and yet her attempts to get her father to understand her mental and emotional turmoil were greeted by her father taking her to the terminally ill ward of the hospital where he works to show her people who are dying and told her, "These are people with real problems. Come back and see me when you have to deal with something real like this." I tried to be amazed that a medical professional could do something that fucked up to his daughter, but I've seen too much to be amazed by that kind of callousness.
I still have miles to go before I sleep.