Ya'aburnee

Chapter 5: Almost Lost Goodbye

CIA 

It only occurs to me now that I've gone over our little therapy session how abnormal it was. 

Not just me plucking the courage to actually get a sentence or two out but Death encouraging me.
Me being his enemy.

Something was off about that, motivating your rival, getting your opponent to fight back harder, it's not a tactic anyone with the goal of winning in mind would follow.
You see your enemy on the ground, you do everything to not let them get back up.
Azriel did the opposite. It went against his nature.

He pulled me to my feet and roared some life back into the supposedly dead fighter inside me.
Death himself couldn't believe how I let myself be so easily deceived, defeated.
He said he thought overpowering me would mean a challenge but it turned out that it didn't take him any effort.
Talk about low blows.
I had never felt more humiliated in my life.
I didn't want to believe his words at first because believing seemed like falling into the trap I thought he was setting up for me.
His words, his actions, his emotions. All of them too convenient, most likely thought through and pre-planned.

After admitting to myself that he had in fact been messing with me, I wasn't going to let Death make a fool out of me again.

He was surprisingly not lying when he said he would leave me in peace for two days. I finally got what I had been craving, a good, peaceful sleep, without me waking up screaming at the top of my lungs or drenched in sweat and burning tears. I came back to my senses, mother's and Death's words dawning on me, sinking into every cell of my mind.
I had given up.
I had declared myself a loser.
I had lost all hope and faith.
Not a single moment passed from that day on that I wasn't torn between wanting to do what's right and being afraid of doing what's right. Words kept replaying in my head, moments were relived in my memory countless times and there were parts of me that the darkness no longer had under control.
But it wasn't me entirely, so the game still hadn't started.

My mind, the most important part, was still under the influence of the dark side, not believing, neither in myself nor in the purpose that my life still held – apparently.
I still wonder what the word marked means and what it means that the screen doesn't say how I will die.
I don't know whether that's something I should be concerned about or not.

Yet none of that, not even knowing that there was still a secret that was being kept from me, made me gain control over the darkness.
To realize that maybe the darkness wasn't as intriguing as it seemed if you learned to play with it.
Death had indeed stopped messing with me but now I had to stop my own self from messing with my mind. The words I had been fed by my demons, I had swallowed them as if they were the only meal left.
In reality they were all just lies to fool me and break me and walk over me.
The girl who was supposed to be the darkness' best opponent.

The night of the same day the Angel of Death visited me was different to the others. In midst the captivating night, in midst my deathlike sleep, an urge tugged at my heart and vaulted all my senses, my brain, my organs back to life.
I wasn't thinking as I threw the blanket to the side and went to wash myself.

Minutes later I found myself holding the prayer rug in my hands.
Laid it out on the ground, smoothed the edges and every corner.
Moonlight shone through the window right down on the rug, on my face, on my hands.

Hands that went up to my ears before I spoke out words that were accompanied by a tear breaking through my eye, trailing a path down my cheek.

With every other word uttered, another tear followed.
And another.
And another.

When my forehead touched the ground in prostration, I was fighting to contain the river streaming out.
But I had never failed at stopping something more.

At a certain point, I gave up.
I hadn't talked to the Lord in a while and I wanted him to know how much I regretted declining his call to me.

I stayed in prostration long enough for the clouds to fly a distance over the sky and the moon to settle in a new place.

"Ya Rabb, ease my heart. Fix my heart. Place light in my heart, light in my hearing, light in my sight, light on my right, light on my left, light in front of me, light behind me, light above me, light below me, make light for me, ya Rabb! Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me."

I said those words so many times as if my tongue had been programmed to say them on repeat for hours.

That night felt like nothing ever had before.
The following night was different too but in a way that I wouldn't wish upon anyone ever.

Not even my worst enemy.

What managed to open my eyes and break me free of the tight grip I was captured in was an incident I wish didn't have to happen.

It should have been anything else that made me realize that I couldn't lose in this life.
It shouldn't have been mother's death that got me out of that place.