Xeno Hemlock

A little more than five years ago, I died and I was never the same man after. After three decades of following the life template society hands out to everybody, something unexpected happened. I was forced to meet Death.

A strong pain in my stomach that made even walking difficult brought me to the hospital where the doctor mentioned the possibility of having cancer. The consecutive visits to the hospital to pinpoint the exact nature of my ailment were accompanied by my new acquaintance Death. 

“You’re not even 30 yet. Are you ready to die?” He asked me as I sat on a bench in the lobby in one of those many boring waiting hours. 

“I’m not,” I told him, my heart beating fast as my voice trembled. In those instances when I thought my life might soon be over, blurred images of my time spent on Earth flashed past me like Phar Lap on his best day. It dawned on me, the truth that I had not known yet at the time: I lived for three decades but I had not truly lived.

He didn’t take me with him, Death, I mean, to wherever he took all the poor, unfortunate, and rich, unfortunate souls once their time on Earth was done. My visits to the hospital ended soon after. I got away alive and cancer-free, my illness (ulcer) cured not long afterwards. But he left me a parting gift, one that I didn’t ask him to give to me, to remember him by, the beginning of our unlikely friendship: a new appreciation of life.

I started incorporating healthy changes in my life: healthy diet, fitness, and lifestyle. My day job asked me to sit in front of a computer for hours, a sure recipe for early death, and I wanted to counter that. Day by day, my world changed. Habits, people, and mindset I liked in the past began losing their luster in my eyes. Like most Pokemon, I was evolving. I got new habits, went to new places, met new people, and received new life challenges. The momentum brought by cascading changes pushed my life to run 220 mph until it crashed. I met somebody who took advantage of my naivety in my new world and twisted my morale before shattering it to pieces.

I remembered what Death asked me before. “Are you ready to die?” I thought I got away scot-free. I was wrong. He only delayed the inevitable.

When you destroy a person’s self-esteem, no matter how big or small, there is no street left for him to go to but Death Avenue. When he gets there, he has two choices: stay there for good or find a way out. I looked for a way out.

Writing saved me. I transmuted my aches and disappointments into words, discovering the restorative effects it had on my soul in the process. I found my purpose, the Holy Grail that gave me life after my spiritual death and drank from it even when I didn’t know what kind of water was inside. 

I left Death Avenue and was never the same man again.

Messenger from Twitter @mercurykailash described the event best:

“Many of the people who were not born into this path/archetype (spirituality) often find their way to it through trauma. 

A life altering event is often needed for the pendulum to swing so far one way that everything must be questioned.

It is not a path for most.”

@mercurykailash

I called it a few things: a quarter-life crisis, an epiphany, an awakening. Though what mattered more was not the name but that it happened. I started to be on the lookout for others who had gone through the same crucible and been burned to life by the violet fire. I wanted to meet others who spoke the same language, those who had been blessed with their own once-in-a-lifetime event. But I was mistaken. It doesn’t happen only once.

This year, I died again. Not as painful as the first time, mind you, but I didn’t know it could reoccur. It’s the knowledge that you made it out alive last time when things seemed so hopeless that makes the second (or third or fourth if you’re lucky) time less dramatic as before. You’ve been transformed already. When that special wave of event is about to crash down on you once more, you’re no longer scared. You’re willing to get engulfed because you know the pain will not last long. It will only make you better.

From my seven-month stint of living alone (with only pets as companions) for the first time to a soft reboot of my writing career after five years of failure to setting free the boy I buried alive, it’s a barrage of transformative events that made me a new man once more.

I still want to continue my writing journey, of course, but I’m looking at it now with a different pair of lenses, influenced both by the humble life of eating supper alone and the strengthened virtues I wish to possess as a writer. Making public my childhood sex abuse story also lifted a heavy weight from my back which I didn’t realize I was carrying throughout the years until the day it was lifted off me. 

It feels good to be reborn. In fact, I am still high and drunk with my recent unplanned re-awakening I still want to revel with the elation instead of expounding on the details of the events that led me to where I am now. Stories for another day or two, perhaps. But for today, and tomorrow, and tomorrow’s tomorrow, I’ll dance in the rain as a new man.

2019: Rebirth.

Photo by Emiliano Arano from Pexels.