Memory Awake (or, the girl who fell out of heaven)

“What was it like?”

How to express it in a way they could understand? “Sunshine without fear of burning. Peace without threat of war. Absolute and unconditional love with no possibility of hatred.”

“Okay,” Jake rolled his eyes, “but you could do anything you wanted, right?”

I sighed. “There was no want. No desire. No need. No id or ego at all: Just being.”

Groans all around. “Sounds boring. My heaven has all the pie I could ever eat. And lots of mind-blowing sex with no STDs or unplanned pregnancies or broken hearts or misunderstandings.”

“Forever?”

“Oh yeah.”

I shook my head. “There’s a book, The Incredible Lightness of Being. When I first saw it, I thought I had found a kindred spirit. I was mistaken. But the title encapsulates what I remember from before: lightness. Lightness as opposed to darkness, lightness as opposed to weight, density, depth, pressure, force. Indeed, an existence quite the opposite of this…this…” I pointed to my head, “being weighed down, by this mind, this body, this world with its moon and sun and a night sky full of lights, stars, that have long since ceased to burn and a universe full of mysteries we of this world are too small to comprehend but of which I was once an infinitesimal part.” I smiled at the group. “In sum, an incredible, unfathomable, lightness of being.”

There were a few good-natured boos and hissing. We were in the tv room, but no one was watching tv. They were all sitting around me. I was the entertainment of the moment in this world of the psychologically damaged, safely removed from the world of the more sane. (I am loathe to call what lies beyond these walls sanity.) In here, not unlike some out there, we have those who hear voices that tell them to do questionable things, those with patterned scars, those who think themselves Queen Elizabeth or Jesus or God. And then there’s me. The girl who fell out of heaven – as they like to call me.

I was just like anyone else until I hit puberty. Then, for some reason, I gained the ability to remember before. My mistake was in descending into the depths of despair finding myself here and now, and then sharing why I was depressed with others.

I have lived within these walls ever since.

Would that the memories awakened in my pubescent brain were the result of some chemical imbalance treatable by pharmaceuticals and therapy. I would gladly recant my confession of prior existence and tuck it all away as a psychotic break brought on by a hormonal imbalance, parental separation, and/or abuse at the hands of a dear relative.

But, alas, it isn’t, and I cannot.

Once, I was a part of the infinite vastness of the universe. I suspect each of us was. There was no I or meor you or us or them. There was simply being. But then I was thrust into this world of finite existence. I became I and discovered a world of others, different yet the same. Equally finite, entombed as we are in sacks of flesh and blood, desperately seeking meaning, ignorant of before and always longing for some imaginary, glorious after.

And in my position of knowing, I still must wonder, will my after resemble my memories of before? Or will I remember being “I”? Will remembering this I mean an eternity of hell as I am once again a part of everything and therefore nothing yet aching with a memory of self?

Or will I be granted the bliss of oblivion? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…

Everyone I have known in this world envisions a heaven filled with pleasures of the flesh or being reunited with those they once loved (what if they loved someone else?) or meeting the Creator.

They imagine hell to be the absence of those things. Or fiery pits of damnation.

Or, perhaps, simply, being forgotten. As if one never existed. As most everyone who has lived in this world has been or will be. I have every reason to believe that the after will be a return to that state of being I remember from before. Beautiful, if one has never lived in this world.

It is a curse, this remembering.

My question is, will I be damned to remember this world for all eternity? Forever weighted by the memory of this I, no longer at one with all that is and ever will be; or will I be allowed to drift into infinite oblivion, once again a part of that incredible lightness of being?

“All right, y’all. Party’s over. Line up,” said the nighttime aide pushing the cart of meds.

I will stop writing now. The pills will do their work for a little while, and I will sleep without dreams and forget. Until tomorrow when memory awakens once again.