From Above

“I don’t love you,” he tells her. She can’t look at him, so she looks down, causing a tear to fall onto the dirty sidewalk. He sees this and feels his own eyes well up. I do love you, he thinks, but I can’t love you. I don’t trust you even though I want to trust you. I don’t trust myself even though I want to trust myself. He doesn’t know why he doesn’t tell her that. Inside, she is consumed with pain. There aren’t anymore words to speak.

Above, the boy and the girl watch themselves, cringing. “I can’t watch this,” he tells her, “I look like an asshole.” She sighs. “You’re not an asshole,” she reassures him. She doesn’t feel the pain like the version of herself down below- she’s watching him through clear eyes.

“Why did we decide to do this again?” he asks her.

“Because we are idiots,” she sighs as she sees herself down below, turn away from him and walk away.

“No, we are both incredibly intelligent,” he reminds her and she scoffs.

“You sound like that self,” she tells him, pointing down to the dirty city street where he is walking back to his car in a daze.

“This is the hardest part to watch,” she reminds him.

They had been watching their chance encounter, their explosive collision, spin into a complicated, confusing web they both needed to free themselves from, from the safety of up above. “Ughhhhhh,” she would exclaim as she watched her below self send a four paragraph text of emotional warfare to his phone. They watch him read it and put his phone down, three days passing until he sends back, “thanks for sharing that.”

“I don’t want you”

“Fuck you”

“I’m sorry”

From above, they hear everything unspoken that is buried underneath the harsh words fueled by defenses and fear. Words of misunderstanding. Words of separation. Words of loss. Words that don’t live in their eyes. Words that aren’t there when they look at one another.

She watches as her below self curls up in shame, feeling misunderstood, judged and rejected. She watches as she lets his words turn her into a shell.

He watches as his below self cripples with guilt. He watches as he removes her from his journey, leaving her behind, in pursuit of something else.

Above, they watch as regret consumes their below selves.

They watch as she dissolves into a lifeless corpse, lying in bed, consumed with self hatred while he carries on, hurt, but grounded in his choice- that what he did was the right thing, and the right thing always leads to peace.

“I was trying to be in control,” his above self observes.

“I need to shower,” her above self observes. “Shower!” She shouts down at her below self, and she watches as she just lays there in filth. “I hate watching this,” he tells her. “You think I am enjoying this? Look at me! I am depressed! I am pathetic! And I smell like a goat I think.”

“You haven’t eaten anything in almost two days,” he observes, his eyes worried.

“I’ve lost faith in myself,” she says quietly, trying to remind herself that she gets out of bed. She eventually does.

“Look at you,” she says snootily, “just living your best life,” she mocks. He is on a dance floor, drunk, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Some blonde below girl attached to him like a tumor.

“She was very boring,” he remembers out loud and she rolls her eyes. “She wasn’t very clever,” he adds. She taunts him “but she made sense. She had all the qualities you wanted, the right age, the right look, the right family, religion, values, the right whatever the-” she stops herself from cursing- that is not part of her above self. He looks at her and smiles, remembering the shock he used to feel every time she exploded into obscenities in the below. It was like a flower exploding molten lava suddenly and with no warning.

“Not everything that makes sense is right,” he tells her. She tries to hide her smile, because she always knew this. In the below, his eyes burned for her, gave away everything he fearfully buried within him- the impossible truth he was running from. It’s why his words caused her so much pain.

“We learn what we want,” she says to him. “We learn what is right for us.”

But he already knows this.

Above, they watch their below selves.

They had agreed to this before they existed. There was a purpose higher than themselves that had to be carried out in the below. They were two souls meant to do something in a mixed up world, there were things they must make right while they existed in time, a purpose that had to be carried out together. But first they had to learn lessons, they had to ascend into who they truly are, it was the only way for them to fulfill what was meant for them.

But from above, it was painful to watch.

Their above selves watched as they both suffered alone through the maze of confusion that is life- disoriented, lost, grasping for comfort in people and places that were only positioning their souls to be at war with the external world.

“We have to find joy in this world alone,” his above self pondered.

“When do we get to the part where I realize drinking isn’t solving anything?” she asks him as they look down at her below self taking shots of fernet next to a stranger at a bar.

“Cheers to getting out of prison!” she is slurring as her and the felon clink shot glasses.

Above, she shudders and he laughs. “Did he really just get out of prison?” he asks her. “I don’t know,” she tells him, shaking her head in disbelief.

Below, at the bar, she is asking the degenerate fugitive, her eyes twinkling, “did you have a favorite prison guard? Who gave you haircuts? Did you have a toilet in your cell? Was it like a port-a-potty or did it flush?”

Above, she points out, “listen you aren’t faring well either,” as she gestures down at his below self that has just lit a joint and is eating a bag of miniature carrots. Just a sloth hiding from his own thoughts until the pot takes over and paranoia hits.

They peer down and watch as his below self begins to panic.

“What is the point of money?” he is asking a pretty brunette who is staring back at him blankly.

Above, they both look at one another. “Absolutely nothing, we should return to bartering,” she answers him. He pauses to let the relief of being understood fill him with a feeling of home. “I agree,” he says.

“This is when we start to get stronger,” she tells him and they watch from above.

Below, she writes “Don’t Quit. Show Them,” on a piece of blue tape that she sticks inside the mirror of her bathroom medicine cabinet. They watch as she stops locking the door from the pain of everything she doesn’t understand and she invites the feelings in. They watch as she endures them, they watch as the feelings leave. They watch as the pain comes and goes. They watch good days. They watch bad days. They watch as she slowly begins to grieve what she had been holding in for so long, as she forgives others and herself, as she begins to treat herself kindly and with genuine love.

“Ascension,” the girl whispers from above.

They watch her write. Lesson after lesson. And they watch him quietly read it all. From above, they can see there is connection in the silence, held together by an inner knowing, a sliver of faith that waivers but never fully leaves.

“Look, this is where you start to not be such a wussy,” she says excitedly. “Wussy?” he repeats looking at her like she is a polite five year old, then looks down at himself. He watches as he discovers what matters to him and what doesn’t. As he loses the fear of speaking his truth. Gains the courage to act on his convictions. Begins to listen to his intuition and trust his inner voice instead of participating in the ping pong match of thoughts between his head and his heart that resulted in self doubt and rumination- in following a path he didn’t choose for himself, one that he was pivoting off and back on again. They watch him stand up for himself, for what he believes to be true deep in his heart- no longer weak willed against others judgements and opinions. “You’re taking control of your own life,” she observes, with pride.

“And look at you, you’ve become completely unhinged,” he says with equal pride and they watch the girl on a bus, below.

“I am this bus!” she is exclaiming while the man sitting next to her tries to move away. “We are all one. Just souls here to experience life! Our egos are what stop us from connection! Without ego, there is truth!!! There is forgiveness! There is understanding! There is peace!!!”

Above, she sighs, “why did it have to happen on a bus?”

“It’s time now,” he says and they both look at one another in anticipation. “Do you want to send the first one?” she asks him. “Okay,” he says.

Below, they watch as the girl clocks into work. She is a server at a restaurant- she loves her job, she doesn’t care if society looks down on her choices, judges her about what makes her happy. She has transformed into someone entirely different, her cup is no longer empty because she’s now able to fill it herself. She is able to give to others and the world now that she is entirely stronger, more self assured and unafraid- everything she needs exists inside her. As she places her finger on the time clock, she hears their song playing from the kitchen. She suddenly thinks of him. Her heart aches, but in a different way. She remembers him. Thank you, she whispers, sending it out into the universe, hoping it finds him.

Above, they both tear up- two sensitive souls, their existence to one another transforming a seemingly hopeless and unforgiving world into one of potential. Of hope.

“Your turn,” he nods to her.

Below, he watches as the boy stands in the snow. He is surrounded by white and feels like he is in the clouds, the ice crystals silencing the world around him. Suddenly a bluebird appears, its bright color shining out amongst the snow in the trees. He remembers her bluebird tattoo and then remembers her. And his heart aches. He remembers how her love made him feel. The strength wells up in him, he becomes taller than the trees covered in snow. Thank you, he tells her, watching the bluebird and swimming in her memory like it was a warm tropical ocean, clear and clean, immersing him in the safety of her love for him.

Above, they look at one another.

“The story hasn’t even begun yet,” he says to her. And she smiles, reaching out to hold his hand.