Watching someone die is an experience nobody wants to be in. The agony and helplessness is too overwhelming for words or even coherent thoughts.  It is worse watching yourself die. You are calm as you seem to float above your body and watch it writher in the pain that is ripping it apart from the inside out. You find you can breathe properly again; the pain is no longer gripping your chest and constricting, instead it is crushing the being you see in front of you. The earth is no longer falling away under your feet, you can think clearly again, your heart is beating and not breaking. In fact, you have to keep on reminding yourself that the person you see down there is, in fact, you and that you being in that suspended state is all a practical illusion, a survival trick of the mind. You know staying up there is not natural; you have to come back down. You are down there, not up in the air of oblivion.

As soon as you come back down you’d do anything to go back up.

I know how that feels. How you actually fall to your knees and clutch yourself in an attempt to hold yourself together. There is nothing you can do, however, except keep yourself breathing. It’s harder then it sounds; all you want to do is stop inhaling so you can die. Because there is nothing at all left to live for. There is no glue or seems that could put your life back together again. It’s broken into too many pieces. And you can feel your heart burning as you sit there. What’s the point of keeping your lungs going if your heart is being slowly incinerated in a merciless inferno?

That demonic situation has more causes then a sickness. So many causes, and yet it ultimately brings on the same conclusion: the death of your heart. I was vaguely surprised to find one can live without your heart. Biology suggests otherwise, but I was standing there after the end of my heart came about and I was very much alive. Unfortunately. Biologists also seem to be wrong about the role of the heart. It pumps blood, yes, but it also seems to be the center of emotion, as it is usually depicted as. Because, even though you’re alive, you cannot feel. There is just numbness.

I learnt very quickly that people say the same things to you when you’re the living dead. Things like they’re sorry, they feel for you, they know what you’re going through. They are all automatic responses, and they are not felt at all. They are just words, and they make no impression at all. The one that got to me the most was “I’m sorry for your loss”. I didn’t lose anything, it was taken away from me. Ripped from me, burnt out of my chest. If I had lost it, I would have been able to find it again. No treasure hunt would ever help me find what I was looking for.

For months I managed to be alive without living. After a while people stopped trying to give me support. I didn’t care; their attempts at comfort were useless. Some stayed by my side, patiently loyal. I didn’t notice. My entire mind was focussed on performing two actions: Breathe and do not remember. The rest my body carried out by itself. Once or twice I looked into my chest and found nothing there. The ashes my heart had created were ice-cold and held no surviving pieces. And how could it was. At nights when I warded off sleep so I would not have the dreams I sometimes had to wrap my arms tightly around myself to stop the cold spreading. It was so painful; icey fingers that refused to stop trying to stop my lungs as well. Breathe and do not remember. Breathe and do not remember…

One day my mind became aware of  more then its programmed two commands. I don’t know where he came from or how long he had been there before my mind noticed him. It was a shock as hard as being electrified as I became aware again. For a few days all I could do was walk around and be in silent awe of everything I had shut out. That was the first emotion I felt in months: awe. Awe at the colours, the smells the feeling of life. The first time I noticed the rain on my face again I think there may have been more then just rainwater running down my cheeks. One person’s sudden presence had shocked me back to life. And when I was over the awe he came again.

I don’t know how he knew that I was done re-discovering the senses of life but somehow he came at exactly the right time. And as I spent time with him other emotions started appearing again. One day, as our time together was up until the next time, I felt the fire in my chest again. I was caught completely off guard; I had forgotten a fire had ever been there before. For a while I fought against it, unwilling to have to forget him in order to keep myself alive again. After fighting for a while I gave up. I let the fire begin, a little curious to see what on earth there was left to burn. Ashes cannot burn, and I saw sure that was all that was left of my heart. As I let it, the fire within spread. I expected the searing destruction of before but this time all I got was glowing warmth.

The warmth grew but instead of it being hot and painful it was more comforting then any words I had heard for what felt like years. Then something came out of the ashes inside me. The sound of my new, beating heart took me so much by surprise I couldn’t move. It was back; it was reborn. My heart wasn’t a normal bird, it was a phoenix. I had been sure I had lost it forever, but there it was; whole and full of all the emotions I had longed for without my knowledge. I was living again.

My end became my beginning.