𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐲 𝐌𝐞 𝐀𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧 ✧ (𝐅𝐫𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐝) [on hold]

✧ Chapter 13 : The Rebirth ✧

Everything we take for granted about our sensitive selves, everything we see, everything we think we remember, is nothing more than a construct of the mind. I had never questioned what I knew, or who I was.

Perhaps I should have, and maybe then I would have realized that I was someone else.

"So, you're really back," Frank stated in disbelief as if it was too good to be true, interrupting the flood of unspoken words of love we were exchanging through gentle touches.

The two of us were currently cuddling on Frank's couch. I was hidden in his arms, finding comfort in what reminded me of my old cocoon of innocence and ignorance.

It's okay to be lost. We spend most of our lives lost, seeking a refuge or some universal explanation that we will never get. Most people are so desperate to get answers that they would be willing to believe anything - although for a moment, I was feeling perfectly serene in a place where I felt like I belonged. I had found a shelter. I had gotten the tiny piece of truth I was due.

Actually, it's very rare to know or understand anything at all. But in this moment, I felt blessed with some sort of short-lived epiphany. A bittersweet numbness had settled after the shock. I was just lying there, perfectly calm, exploring my... 'new-old' memories lazily like one would wander in a park in midsummer. My hair was gently being played with.

And for five minutes, everything was alright.

Maybe things happen for a reason. Is it a part of some greater plan or simply karma balancing our lives?

Or maybe they simply don't, which means the world would be nothing but absurd, a joke, a simple coincidence. Being so tiny on the universe's scale, obviously we can't see the big picture. We will never know. The only thing we will never grasp is our own incapacity to understand anything else than our own incomprehension.

That one last thought made me smile and chuckle under my breath. Frank looked down at me. "What's making you laugh, buttercup?" he asked softly, caressing my cheek gently with his knuckles.

I shook my head. "Nothing, I was lost in my thoughts."

"Mhm. Don't drown." He kissed my forehead and brought me a little closer.

It was still raining cats and dogs outside, a hellish downpour by anyone's standards. I caught myself blessing the roof above our heads. I rested my head on Frank's chest and closed my eyes. He barely budged but kept the steady rhythm of the soothing motions of his fingers through my blonde scalp.

But I couldn't block my thoughts forever, not more than stopping time or keeping Frank and I in our bubble. Eventually, the anxiety came back. It's so hard to hold on to anything good. It's all so slippery. It drips and slides out of our hold like thin sand.

Dante was the very first to conceive Hell as an urban, organized environment. Before him, we didn't speak of the Gates of Hell, but of the mouth of Hell. I had just crept out of the shadows of amnesia, only to begin a journey to damnation as I was slowly being swallowed whole by the beast of depression.

My world had been bleached and then tinted black and white. I couldn't see the colors of life around myself anymore.

Being conscious of our own existence help us ask ourselves a lot of questions, most of which are too complex to answer. But it also makes us realize how very little time we are granted on Earth. We barely get enough to learn how to enjoy life before we die of old age. That thought terrified and paralyzed me.

I started worrying, not for my own fate but for Frank's. He was the anchor I needed. But unlike Frank, anchors barely undergo the ravages of time. Humans suffer from aging more than anyone because they see themselves decay and suffer from it.