Mother of the valley
They say that simple is never easy and easy is never worth it. I guess that this is true, but a lot of me would like to know that it isn't. The same part of me that would like to trust someone is what's keeping me from that. Even knowing my friends love me more than some of their family still leaves me feeling like they would also do what was done to me by mine. If it's so simple to love, why is it so hard to trust? If I am so easy to be loved, am I even worth that love?
I left the valley floor years ago when I failed to end my own life. As the sun lit the day but still hid below the horizon, I hung a shoe sole's distance from the floor as I realized what I had done. At that moment I saw a truth that was so obvious I had overlooked it my entire life. The very people I trusted, loved, and listened to beyond everyone else were lying to me.
The photo of them and my father spoke to me without words. Photos capture more than your image; they capture who you are in that moment. This was the last picture of him. It brought me joy and pain because everyone was smiling except him. While my mother's smile was uncomfortable, it was present.
I had asked the woman who held me in that photo about them. Even though she would have kind words, it was clearly a topic she didn't want to stay on for long. She said my father had a sad heart, and my mother was more than enough to cure that, but my heart was sad too. I was told that he took his life so I could have mine and so my mother would have enough energy to raise me. As irony would have it, I was dying in the same room he took his life. Doctors say you can die of a sad heart, that as the heart weakens so does the body, eventually becoming too weak to sustain life.
They say that the Valley was the only place with enough joy for people like us, but it only made my father's sadness deepen until he leapt into it. There was never another photo of my birthmother smiling after the one I was now staring at. As death's hand was on me, I asked if my mother knew this would be our last family photo? Was that worry, fear, or sadness in her eyes? Why did they leave me? Would we be reunited in the next life?
In the last two photos of my mother after my father's death, it was clear to see that she struggled to even show the polite curl of a smile, because a sadness was consuming her. In these images she wore a smirk that longed for him, for us, for her family. It became painfully clear to see in her eyes that she had already left to be with him.
Tears that streamed from my eyes raced to the rope around my neck but failed to pass it. Sound lived where they could not reach, and this twine was both the oppressor of my cries and the emancipator of my depression.
The relaxation of my decision was countered by an epiphany—my parents were speaking to me. They said a simple sentence: "Eyes will tell you the truth." The eyes of those other people in the picture didn't match their smiles! Their eyes showed me the reality of what drove my parents and me to suicide, and they hid it with their smiles—friendly, welcoming smiles that masked the sharpness of their fangs.
The Mother of The Valley hid hers best, which made her the scariest of them all, and I was in her arms, not my birthmother's. I tried to take away the constricting pressure by standing on the tips of my toes, but it wasn't enough. I was struggling to get a foothold as darkness closed in, blurring the details of the dimly lit room from my periphery. I was taking the final photo of my life as the aperture of my sight closed.
The Mother was meek, soft-spoken, and a pacifist to the uneducated, but in my death, it became clear what she was. As panic, fear, and the primal urge to live were overtaken by darkness, my last thought wasn't a burning desire to live but a regret for never having lived in the first place.
In this vacuum of lifelessness, an almost black gray spoke to me in faint flickers. I cannot translate what it said, but it held profound meaning. Philosophers will say that time is a human construct created for the measure of time, but time in and of itself is without time. In my darkness I experienced this—time stopped and started with overwhelming voracity.
Events that seemed independent of each other now connected more clearly than ever. My suicide hurt, but this new knowledge broke me. The doctors that I trusted, the woman who took me in and treated me as her own child, and the entire community that I looked at like family were all in on the little details that would shape my life. They were all lies!
My parents freed themselves, and now I was free. We were free, and I hoped beyond hope that I would be free with them in a life where the pain could not touch us anymore. The sense of being free from this cult was short-lived as physical pain merged with my emotional anguish and a deafening ring became louder.
Shortly after regaining mental consciousness, I heard my breathing – it was deep and savage. As I exhaled air from my mouth, it burbled in the blood that pooled around it. The full weight of my body must have been too much for my hastily tied knot, leaving me unprotected as I fell onto the hardwood floor.
The next sound came from her, but I didn't hear the door open or any footsteps before she spoke. Her voice was submissive and more soothing than a soft summer's rain – a rain that rhetorically asked the banana tree for permission to slide down its leaf onto the forest floor. But just like that leaf, there was no option to reply. Her choice was made before leaving the cloud.
"Oh, my dear child, my joy, my life, thank you for living."
I shivered as she pulled me on top of her thighs, her torso curling protectively around me. The heat from her hand drew sweat from my scalp as it cradled my head. Her touch invited my movements as I involuntarily nestled my forehead into the notch of her neck, feeling the pulse of her beating heart. I knew the reality of her, as well as the danger I was in, but she had been the safety of a mother for so long I could not stop myself.
Death had taught me that reality is the junction of truth and fact, but still, I questioned it. What they had done was so deeply transformative I wanted to believe them more than myself. It was unclear if it was death's disappointment at me trying to skip the line, my return from this near-death experience, or her touch that was causing my muscles to spasm.
Despite her being the tranquility of a single snowflake floating to earth, her embrace felt like the deadly grip of a lioness. The once soothing sway with subtle pressure behind my earlobe now felt almost piercing.
I felt everything! The beat of her heart, the rise and fall of her breath, as well as the fabric of our clothes, but worst were the details of her fingerprint. They were as coarse as a big cat's tongue. Her hands were as delicate as an infant's, yet now they felt rough and frighteningly powerful, like she was savoring the warm blood of a fresh kill. The line her pinky made was simultaneously cold and hot, like ice branding a message into my very essence.
"What did you see?"
How could she have known this? Why did she know that I had even had a vision?
"You're safe, my child. Death cannot carry you. You are a messenger, and I am your protector. What did you see?"
My protector? Where were you as the rope cut into me? When my feet kicked at the floor and my shoes flew off? How could you protect me from death when you could not even stop me from killing myself?
These were the words I yelled at her in my head as my throat was on fire from what I could only assume were breaks in the cartilage. The sounds of sobbing amplified the pain as if the fibers of the rope had worked their way into me and were trying to finish the job. My spit mixed with blood from my nose onto her cleavage, becoming a sticky, slippery mixture that was equal parts copper, breath, and perfume.
Her breath was warm and sweet, her calm was magical, and for a moment all the lies she orchestrated weren't important. My parents' suicides and everything the doctors of the community told me about my emotions all made sense again as I looked into her eyes – eyes holding back tears. I believed her truth more than mine until I closed my eyes. Her voice was now my mother's as she hummed a comforting lullaby.
Through the rhythm of this woman's song, my mother spoke to me and said, "My son, you are in danger. You must not tell her anything other than this: I was on a road that led out of the valley. On this road I walked alone even though I wanted to be with you, but the road was moving me out of the valley as you smiled proudly at me.'"
As I relayed this to the Mother of The Valley, a tear fell from her eye to the bridge of my nose and rolled into mine. Its temperature eventually complimented mine as it joined my newly cried tear. Still ignoring the blood that was staining her clothes and slipping down to her belly beneath her undergarments, she wiped our tear away and instructed me to leave the valley. She went on to say that once I was away from the valley, the vision would complete itself.
At this time, she called another into the room where they collected my most essential items into a case, set that at the doorway, and left.
As they left, we stayed there a while longer. We were wet from blood that was now drying, tears that had turned into trails of salt, and rope. When my strength fully returned, she called another person in who gave me a token card and said it would not run out of money. That I should use what I needed as I needed it. Then they set a large plate of food between her and me.
This was the last meal I would eat here or with her, and every morsel of food was filled with anxiety, relief, but most of all, fear.
We walked together until we reached the edge of the valley where she hugged me for the last time. I felt as if her hug attached a new rope, and her final deep squeeze conveyed her total control over me. But she didn't know that I knew the truth. She didn't know that I was inadvertently given all the remaining details in that pre-packed bag to answer all the questions I now had.
The journey to unravel intentional disinformation may take the rest of my life, but at least it's now my life to live. Next time death is near, I will not have rage to live, nor will I have any shadows of that rage – which was the regret of not having lived in the first place.