Souls Intertwined (Souls Collided Sequel)

ch 1

And, for the first time in my life, my mind went quiet.

It felt weird, to have no voice scrutinizing every moment that is fleeting amongst my perception.

With death, I realized life is quite simply a collection of fleeting moments that we perceptualize into something we deem much more meaningful.

None of it really means anything, yet simultaneously, all of it means everything.

You gave my life its meaning, and watching you go through the stages of grief because of me is almost as painful as watching you move on.

I expected death to be worse. To be scarier. Honestly, I expected an endless void. Just blackness, eternally. Like, how it was before you were born. Yet again, nobody remembers before we were born, so who was I to try and predict something there's no possible way to predict until you experience it?

Not to say death isn't an endless void. Death is whatever you make it.

With death, I also realized how truly horrendously my ADHD fogged up my brain. I could think clearly and my thoughts felt more collected now that they were no longer restricted to exist amongst the walls of a mentally ill brain.

Well to be fair, my thoughts don't exist anymore. I don't exist anymore. But you know what I mean.

The ceremony was beautiful. My father and Nick did a great job applying my wishes to make my funeral exactly what I had envisioned.

It's a bit unsettling, watching your own funeral play out.

It was unsettling planning my own funeral. I feel like that's not a common thing for most people to do in their lifetime, but after the diagnosis all I had was time to think about it.

I stand above my own body, looking into the casket, seemingly seeing myself in third person. But I wasn't, because I am no longer me in that sense.

I'm still me, but I am now the rawest and most natural form of myself. Lacking my vessel and my human thoughts, I am able to exist purely as the most authentic version of my consciousness. An orb, some might say, of a mind once confined to a brain that is now one with the oxygen those still living have the pleasure to inhale.

I was able to watch the funeral from an unbiased perspective. I watched them fondly, and nothing struck enough of a chord in me to cause me to feel human emotions again, which I didn't think was possible for an orb of energy to feel.

Until I witnessed my best friend break down.

He stuttered, as he tried to give the eulogy, until he began to cry. Something stirred in me, or around me, or however you'd explain a stirred consciousness of a deceased boy. Whatever it was, I felt it. I felt it enough to descend down to the Earth I miss, and suddenly I was back in my body.

Or, perhaps, a figment of my imagined body from the life I lived. Or maybe, in this universe beyond the grave where the impossible is somehow possible, maybe I was back in my body. Whatever I had descended into, it felt right, and I knew I'd serve the remainder of my time in the afterlife in this form.

Much better than being an orb of consciousness.

I was there, next to Nick on the alter, as everyone watched him lose it. I scanned the face of a boy who felt utterly lost. Seeing him hurt at my expense hurt more than the excruciating pain of your soul being ripped from its body.

I reached my hand out to hold him, to comfort him, but my transparent touch reached beyond him. I was reminded that even in the land of the impossible, I died. I'm not actually here with him. But it's true my spirit was. I wish there was a way to make him feel me somehow.