The Other Side of Life

Summary

The Other Side of Life reflects on loneliness, imagination, and the hope for peace—an intimate meditation on isolation, dreams, and new beginnings.

How tired I am of this lonely life that is eating away at my time and mind. But I find comfort in knowing that there is peace on the other side of life. My life. Not that I am anxious to get there, nor do I think that it is a better place. And peace comes with fear because this is the only existence I know, but. Loneliness is in my eyes and isolation is how I spend my time even when people are around me. I am waiting for the dreaded end to come. I hope it will be a new beginning of what I have no knowledge of. I have no delusions of a Utopian paradise on the other side of life. My life.

I look and I see the happiness and the fulfillment that I have always sought. It is ever so far away from me. She lives in the wondrous joy of my imagination. Yet, she is shrouded in the mist of reality. She is to come, she is here, and she will never be. For me. Dreams of her are like drinking water without substance. Eating foods without nourishment mirrors my yearning, because she is beyond touch. The sound of her voice is that which I create and have never heard. By day, she hides within the crevices of emptiness. By night, restlessness surrounds her. She resides as a filler. She keeps the breath of despair from becoming overwhelming. In my life.

I can only assume that on the other side of life there is neither day nor night. I assume this because I do not know any better. When the moment comes, I will probably know even less. I will know and experience nothing at all on the other side of life. I will not even experience the peace I seek because peace is a living experience. Complaining is not self-pity. I believe I deserve my current state. This is because of the things that I have said and done to others in my life. Mercy is given to the undeserving. Still, even mercy comes with just penalties. Those penalties are not adequate to repay for wrongs committed. To others.

I wash myself with her consciousness because I know that she exists somewhere. Not near and not far from me she lives and makes me aware of her through dreams and fantasies. I am touched and brushed by her. For an infinite amount of time that can be measured within a moment, loneliness of life is dispelled from me. I am awake to life. I smile. She is only a phantasmic figure conjured by a lonely imagination. An imagination that makes the nonexistent real. Which she is. As real as flowers in a looking glass. As real as certified realized. As genuine as here and as solid as now. She lives.

On the other side of life resides never-before. In the never-before, loneliness is no more, and dreams are gone. If she awaits me there, I will never know. And yet I will be with her. How, I do not know because I have not existed in the never-before before. She can’t call to me. She can’t awaken me in the never-before. But I know without knowing that she will be there with me. Call it feeling if you want, and never degrade it to hope, because she is not, and magnificently she is. In my mind. In my mind that is both tired and eager to live. In my mind where she gives me companionship in solitude and a kiss before and during sleep.

I am tired of loneliness. So, I say that I am tired of the loneliness I create for myself. A loneliness that I create for myself that I am unwilling to evacuate. Loving her who is and adoring she who is not. This is my life. I deserve it for the wrong things I have said and done to others in my life. Have done.