Sympathy for the Angel

Chapter Ten: Anomalies

I must admit something: People make no sense to me. But on the other hand, they make absolute sense to me. There's only a hand-full of entities who know why humans are broken, and of them, I am the lowest ranking individual with this knowledge. But I know why humans are broken.

As far as I know, the only "entities" who are fully aware of why people are broken are God, Michael, Jesus, and me.

And I'm not supposed to know.

I once saw a man hang himself on Valentine's Day while listening to Christmas music (specifically, "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby). He was suffering from severe depression, although, from the outside, he had (what appeared to be) the ideal life. And yet, he suffered from debilitating depression. But here's the thing: He didn't know he suffered from depression. He figured he was just sad about something; he just didn't know what it was — he didn't know there was actually a chemical imbalance in his brain.

I remember standing there, in his home with him while his wife and daughter were out shopping — for his Valentine's Day gift, no less — when he simply got up from the couch, went to his garage, pulled some rope from his toolbox, tied a makeshift noose, climbed a small step ladder, and hanged himself from the bracket attaching his automatic garage door to the ceiling.

No matter what I said to him through my abilities as a Guide, he did not waiver from his desire to take his own life.

Suicide is the opiate of the depressed.

That day was one of those days when emotion was one of those things God didn't give us. The heart-wrenching sight of when that man's wife and daughter came home was nearly unbearable.

He hanged himself from the metal brackets which allowed his automatic garage door to open and close. So when his wife and daughter came home, the first thing they noticed was the garage door as it only opened half-way, then shut again. The door's wheels in the bracket would. Hit the place where the man tied the rope and was hanging; it would sense an obstruction, then close again. The door never got high enough for man's wife and daughter to see his feet hanging through the opening between the garage door and the floor.

But when the woman got out of her car, went in their house, and walked around to the door leading to their attached garage, she was met by the horror of seeing her husband — the love of her life, her soulmate, the father of their child — hanging lifelessly from the metal bracket, illuminated only by the garage door opener's dim default lights.

Seeing this woman break down — the pain in her face, the tears in her eyes, the anguish in her screams — made me, for the first time in thousands of years, genuinely question God.

But as it turns out, this was the first of many anomalies I began to notice. This one event opened my eyes to an entirely new perspective on humanity — and God.