Sharing Pain《sambucky》

《sharing pain》

Soulmates. [noun]

a person ideally suited to another as a close friend, or perhaps, as a romantically involved partner.

Soulmates. Two people drawn to each other by nothing but a bond between their mere essence, the core of their personality, their souls.

Together, they are the strongest.

Divided, they feel incomplete.

Of course, on the one hand, some might think this might be a blessing, knowing there, somewhere on this planet, is someone only theirs. Someone meant to be theirs.

Those people are foolish, the others say, since soulmates were bonded by a power, too mighty for human brains to comprehend, by nothing but pain. Their only lead to take them to their other half is the physical pain they are going through, exactly by thirty eight percent. Why exactly this percentage was a thing nobody but the mighty power will ever know about. It makes finding them more difficult, but also good since one does not feel everything their soul mate are going through.

Another attempt of gods to ruin humanity was the awful knowledge that not always are those two souls desperately trying to find their other half destined to meet. Sometimes, their paths would be way too different to even consider crossing, and some may die not knowing their soulmates faces, not ever hearing their soulmates voices. Doomed to never know what it feels like being in complete and utter love, enchanted by that one person to always change your live.

Or, a fate way worse than that was losing your soulmate of unnatural causes, or too young. Those souls used to be complete, now their hearts would be empty for eternity, to always thrive for the presence of the other, knowing it was futile. Most of those cases do not see any point in living anymore, and it sometimes drives them into committing suicide. The other times, they manage to convince themselves to live on a life good enough, their soulmate would enjoy it too.

As always, there are the ones that do not believe in all this jizz, not bothering to even question the one or two times they didn't do anything, but still were in slight pain. They just live on, not wanting to know what it feels like to be at utter peace. Those people just life on, not bothering to find their other half. It would be unfair, if their other half is one of the desperate ones.

Hah, the desperate ones. Yes, the most pitiful of them all. Men, women, people in general, in such need to find their soulmates, they are harming themselves for some kind of sign. They are ones that cut themselves, sometimes in public places, as to make someone react to it and say 'Hey! I can feel that!'. It rarely happenes, doesn't stop the desperate ones from trying though. Or they carve words into their skin, things as 'Where?', 'Name' and their coordinates, in hopes that their soul mate can follow the pain on their skin and trace back the letters and be successful in finding each other.

Sam Wilson did not believe in the desperate ones' antics, he really thought of them as nothing but pitiful.

His view on them had changed drastically after experiencing his soulmates' pain for the first time.

He was a very cheerful six-year-old child, playing in the neighbourhood all day long.
Most of his friends and classmates had already felt the connection, a pain that wasn't caused by their own doing. Everyday, someone else would cheer and scream in happiness, finally having felt the connection snap into place.

It was always joyful.

It should have been joyful for Sammy, too.

It wasn't.

They were playing softball in the backyard, Sam's own mother and another woman were sitting on the bench, trading cooking recipes when it happened.

First, he felt something snap at his back. He brushed it off, thinking he slid too close to a branch. Then, he felt dizzy, a heavy wave of anxiety creaked up his spine when his skin started slowly burning.

But, then, oh, did it start. A scream so mortifying, humans shouldn't be able to do such sounds, ripped out of his throat as fireworks exploded behind his closed eyelids. It felt like his head was being ripped into shreds, followed by someone hammering inside of his skull against the walls. His whole body shook on the floor since his knees were too weak to support his weight anymore.

Distinctly, he remembered his mother and sister sitting next to his collapsed form, their hands hovering over his quivering body, but not quite touching since they were afraid of even causing a little bit more pain.

One day, he would know and recognize this pain as electroshocks, but as of back then, he had no idea of something so painful, it could even compare to this kind of pain.

He crawled into his mother's lap, and sobbed into her chest, but the pain wouldn't ease up. He wanted to be comforted, he wanted cuddles and he wanted to not be in pain anymore.

He wanted his soulmate to not be in pain anymore.

All of a sudden, his parents took action, grabbing the wailing toddler and rushing to the next hospital. On the way there, to Sam's very short cut relieve, did it stop, meant, it lasted exactly seven minutes and eighteen seconds.

A number that would haunt Sam down.

But as already mentioned, his relief deflated when he felt himself getting choked up. Something stopped his soulmate from getting air, and he felt it in his very core, as his own lungs just stopped breathing. He felt like he was drowning, it felt like someone had wrapped something over his gaping mouth to stop air from entering his almost collapsing lungs. It was painful, just not as painful as the other thing his soulmate had experienced.

Later, in Afghanistan, he would learn that what his soulmate was going through was called waterboarding.

But as of back then, as a six year old, nothing felt sweeter than finally collapsing into unconsciousness, mourning his soulmates fate,

and therefore his own.