Among the Missing:

Almost never are we given any real warning in life for anything. We may feel as though life passes us by – the windows are a blur of colour and moments that pass from one pane to the next without ever looking back at you. When the windows go dark however, in the various night times of our lives, we can feel something terrible looking back at us and are left paralyzed in it’s stare.

There are those who would say that life is one big experience, but really, it’s nothing more than a series of fragmented memories in the end somehow tied together by the unified experience of emotion, elation and loss. We sit back and say nothing when we are in love with someone, don’t say “I love you” to a loved one nearly enough times, or let some fantastic experience pass us by because we are frightened for reasons we cannot completely identify in the immediate.

When someone you immediately and entirely connect with comes into your world or you realize, suddenly, as happens at times, just how much someone who has been there all or most of your life, *really* and TRULY means to you, you can find yourself almost breathless in a singular instance with both overpowering love for that person and complete terror at the idea that you may, someday, find them to be gone from your world – that they are now, among the missing, in your life.

When these people leave, go missing, just disappear from our world we may, ourselves find ourselves feeling as though we too are one of them… Ghosts in a world that is real only to others…

I think, at some point in our lives, we realize that not only the ones around us will be gone but that even we, as invincible as we might have once felt or seemed, will too be gone – to go to where ever it is that we are going that may or may not even be where we came from. Mortality leaves a nasty taste in your mouth and it’s one that’s not easily washed away. Nothing rinses the taste of blood from the mouths of those murdered by life… You cannot help but feel as though people have been stolen from you and that, at some point, you shall also be stolen… Down a dark alley being drug by your hair into a shadowed doorway by someone you cannot see… cannot hear… and cannot know…

Yes, perhaps this train of thought is a bit depressing, and I have to say that, at the moment, I am in a state of what I can only describe as a “peaceful sadness.” It’s not the crushing, breathless depression that most would equate with someone who talks of dying, but rather a strange serenity brought on by many thoughts and many conversations over the last couple of days and I just wanted to get it out of my mind before it became something else altogether.

I know that I feel better for sharing this strangeness with you and I hope that I have not made you feel terrible with this moment of darkness of mine. I refuse however, on all and any fronts, to ever allow myself to *become* this darkness again which is also why I chose to share it with you.

Just remember – we are the sum of our experiences of others and the love returned by those who have experienced us. Love powerfully, love truly and love without fear.

“If you’re frightened of dying, and holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels – freeing you from the earth.”

~ by mowvoon on September 14, 2008.