"Oh, it's you. What are you doing with that?"
Those were the last words I ever spoke. The shotgun did its job with a single, booming blast. I shouldn't have answered the door but I was too lonely not to. The universe seeks out its balance no matter where you may run and hide. I always sort of knew that but never could face it - story of my life.
It was long, lost Debby-Lynn standing at that door. I'd have bet my life I'd never see her again and, well, dammit I guess I did! But you get so beaten down, day after day of "You don't count. Your feelings don't count", that you simply get crushed by the fears of it unless you're a brave soul who can face dangers of life. I was not a brave soul - and now I never will be.
Guess I better back up to the beginning. Debby-Lynn I knew 25 years ago. I fell hopelessly, madly in love with her, straight out of a Hollywood movie. Meet your soul mate, get through your period of doubt, then live happily ever after. That's what sells tickets anyway. In real life, lives are broken and despair rules with a heavy hand. "What is meant for me? Are dreams for the next world only?"
Debby-Lynn was married when I knew her but that made no difference to my singing heart. This boy was dancing in the streets. That feeling of completion vindicating your childhood faith will have you star-stepping on the clouds. Suddenly, the impossible became possible. Like Kennedy, I found myself asking, "Why not?" instead of, "Why?" In her presence I was transported to the heavens.
"You too can have love."
But fear and cowardice ruled the day in the end. Her marriage was an easy excuse to bow out. Oh sure, I told her I loved her but did I feel worthy of the limitless treasure I'd sought for so long? It wasn't long before she moved away and I fell into a deep, dark pit of devastation. To my everlasting guilt, I turned on her near the end, driving her away, thinking that would make me safe from my feelings for her. But it only dug the hole deeper.
For a while there I neither spoke nor laughed. The light was gone and my world once again receded into darkness. I took a job as a taxi driver and to this day that period of despair is branded upon my soul. I'd pick up couples I enviously spied headed out for the evening. I'd drive through shiny suburban neighborhoods of families seemingly set atop mountains I could never climb. I was a being from another planet on the outside looking in.
Passionate sex scenes were the worst. I imagined that was Debby-Lynn living the life, sharing her body and soul, crucifying me in the process. Better to have never known treasure lost. Life went on but I pined away. Was it ever any real? Did I just make it all up? I have to find my way back to her. I wrote about her, page after page, imagining and exploring the dream I saw with her. By that one thin thread I was hanging.
But I only kept running, too afraid to face myself. Then a few years ago, it all unraveled for me. I suffered a severe nervous breakdown from which I never recovered. I tracked Debby-Lynn down and she'd had her two children and house on the hill and everything I never gave her but wished to. It just seemed finally the dream was over, my hope sunk.
My running reached a new degree then even as my physical body disintegrated. I moved from place to place, hiding in the cloak of anonymity. How could I explain my shame? I didn't want anyone to know my name - all the while desperate for everyone to. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard a knock on my friendless door. No matter how unreasonable I clung to hope that one day I'd get the knock that saved me, that I'd drop to my knees in glorious surrender, heaven awaiting.
Yes, that was Debby-Lynn at the door just as I'd always hoped, but that look on her face! She had a possessed look of fury, of someone who'd been whipped a thousand times but could not take another lash. Her laser eyes did not blink, seeing me exactly for what I was. And once confirmed, she pulled the trigger, driven over the edge by frustration and hate. Oh, what seeds I have sown.
Funny how advertisers speak of storing your data in a cloud because that's exactly where the life story of each end every soul resides in the afterlife. Naturally, I rushed to see Debby-Lynn's true story. Boy, were we two souls incapable of communicating.
She'd felt everything I had, after all. Her marriage was a prison, not the paradise I'd imagined. Sex was torment, not skyrockets of ecstasy. Smiles of propaganda fiercely guarded her secrets of state. For years I'd lamented, "Just one word from her would change my life." She too was just as starved for that drop of water in the desert of her life. Instead, I had clung to the false morality of "honoring" her marriage, that I was no good for her. I just couldn't pull out of that tailspin.
Neither could she escape her prison. Like me in my own way, she'd made false starts in rectifying her life but always careful to sabotage them in the end. She wanted to say, "See? I tried. There's no point in trying." Dear God did I recognize myself in that. But the soul knows what it knows no matter how convincing our outward smiles. Hers had been seared and shorn, driving her to grab her double barreled instrument of salvation, to forever destroy the pea under mattress: me. Can't say I didn't know that same frustration.
*****
Nobody's anonymous in Heaven. We all count. Every dream is precious as the sun. I'd asked for and been given a life, the ultimate act of trust. And I duly wasted it. Upon arrival a soul is granted one wish. I asked that the heathens of hell called earth be blinded as to who shot me. Debby-Lynn was innocent, undeserving of the judgment of jackals who could never know or understand the truth. Goodbye, Debby-Lynn. Remember, the next time the rain falls those are tears of mine.
