Inspirational True Short Story

Released

Sometimes when I close my eyes really tightly and isolate myself from the external vices that clung to my very existence, I wholeheartedly wish for release. From what exactly, I sometimes question. But if I take a good look deep within me, I know that what I'm searching for is an escape, to run away from the needy part of my life that craves attention- that echoes redemption, screams emotion. But that part of my life didn't understand that I stopped feeling and caring the day life took life away from me. I can't feel the vibrations a normal individual would feel nor the emotion that a normal individual would eventually cave into. I knew that retreiving that emotional hunger and regaining that life lost was pure wishful thinking. Yet, they say if you want something with all your heart and being, and will do anything and everything to come within reach of it...you'll get it. But does that really apply to me, too? It would be years before I finally found the answer.

Sometimes I wish for the impossible. For all the elements that created life to combine into a force capable of taking my soul and silencing it forever. Why? Because from the moment my family was torn away from me, I realized that my life would be a series of events that I could not have changed even if I wanted to. I wouldn't be like other people. And how did I know that? From the moment I was six when my parents were forced to die because of a robbery and my brother was killed because of a hit and run, I realized that I couldn't cry anymore. When the endless tears stopped, the pain began. Then that stopped too. Only once did reality slap me in the face just a few seconds after the life was taken from their bodies. Then arrived the pain, that sense of deprival that occurs when milk is taken away from a newborn baby. It was only a matter of time when the truth became so unbearable did my emotions become uncontrollable. Afterwards, came nothing at all. Not one tear gifted my soul with release. Not one emotion bathed my body with sadness. Nothing. I felt nothing.

Truth be told, I live for no one. The only valid reason I'm a loner is because I have no one. Sure I have foster parents who provide me with the basics every kid needs: food, water, shelter. But doesn't every kid also want that affection, that pat in the head from your father, or perhaps, that kiss on the cheek from your mother? Yes, every child hungers for that. I did. But I soon convinced myself I was only fooling myself, that I would never receive a happiness that would light up my blank eyes. Put as a rhetorical question, I wonder, Why me?

Sometimes I am desperate to feel a tinge of something, anything until the only thing I'm craving for is a miracle. Memories range from memorable to heartbreakingly beautiful. The beautiful times I experienced with my family prior to their death was just surrounding myself in their presence, sensing them, and loving them. The nearness of their bodies was enough for me. They gave me a reason to feel in place, especially the apple of my eye, my brother. At night, when I sang my brother to sleep, I occasionally endured a feeling of loss; the kind of loss that foreshadowed death. So it would be a lie if I said I didn't see my family's death coming. I knew I had to make the best of my life with them, or whatever is left of it. I still remember that the last thing my mom said to me was that she'll be back. I was sure then of her fulfilling that promise. I don't know if I'm so sure now.

After their death, I was lost. Out of place in a world that was so unpredictable. I had friends once. From them, I learned what happiness, bliss, and excitement was. I never felt it, but my friends feeling it was enough for me. I am grateful to them for that. For making me appreciate that I'm not alone and that their priceless moments of laughter can include me, too. But they don't understand that I am, in fact, alone in my misery. I realize that each of my friends have a story of their own. Their life stories are all written in stone. Mine is unwritten because my future is hazy. When I reflect their stories on my own, mine comes out as an empty, cracked shell. A shattered barrier on the outside, vacant on the inside, personifying me.
Despite that bottomless pit that's wormed its way to a big part of my life, I still look forward to those few moments of each day when I'm allowed to stroll outside at night, gazing up at the pure moonlight longingly. Letting the wind rattle my hair and encircle me with life, loosening my body and opening my senses. The flowers that are scattered on the ground offer me if not hope, then some sort of inspiration. A rose will eventually shrivel up but it's never late when they bloom once again; this time more beautiful, stronger than ever before.

My life changed drastically when I discovered that something was to occur this night. I sensed something odd, which made me stiffen with anticipation. It was when I walked the same old pattern into the forest, did I look up to see the full moon covered with a purple twilight. As my penetrating gaze raked the sky for a movement or sign, the wind picked up and the trees shook from the thick tension in the air. I felt myself become part of the night. A powerful urge overcame me and I felt the need to consume the world as a whole. I was wild yet in control. I was everything yet nothing. Finally, I began to feel.
As the adrenaline replaced the aftershocks into each pore of my body, I waited. I waited to be the corpse-like structure I was once before. A right turned awfully wrong, a life turned utterly lifeless, a body turned half-shadow. Once I let myself breathe again, I saw magic. Yes, to say the least it was the inexplicable and unimaginable. I saw my parents in the distance bathed with darkness. Yet, they had an aura of light around them that prevented the night from completely swallowing them. This was the miracle that I was waited ten years to discover. This is what my mother meant when she said, "We will come back, we promise." All the emotion that was reflected in my eyes was given permission to leak out. I didn't feel alone anymore. Rather, I felt what every child felt when they belonged to someone.
When I said I wanted all the forces that created life to merge, I didn't realize I was getting what I asked for. Indeed, all the emotions that did create the earth finally combined into the truest and purest gift of all- love. At last, I was released into the night and taken to my family.