The man that fell inside himself

It all happened unexpectedly, or at least this is what he told himself when he found himself hitting the rock bottom of his soul.

The darkness was blinding and his back hurt terribly because of the harsh fall.

His soul was cold. He would have never expected that. If anyone had asked he would for sure have said his soul must be warm, he is a living being after all. As it turned out though, in side him he was cold and hurting in pitch black darkness.

There was nobody to blame but himself. For a long time now he had been toying around with the dark cloud that seemed to have spread over his mind.

For some reason he did not do anything to usher it away, but in a way, he was curious to see how far it would go, which he did. He now found himself incapable of gathering his strength to rise up and clear his mind.

The silver lining was that there was no lower place he could fall to … or at least that is what he hoped … maybe he should not tempt the fates though, this was bad enough.

‘John?!, John … ‘, somebody was calling his name, but he could not open his eyes to see who it was, the effort to even think of it had drained him.

No, he will just lie there and rest for a bit, maybe after he will feel better.

Janice touched his forehead and felt his skin was burning. She could not wake him up and she needed to take the children to school. He was not well though, something was definitely not right.

She tried to remember the night before. He had not said much, he had not eaten much, he had just stared into the white wall behind her seeming lost in thoughts.

The children, she could not scare the children.

She pulled out her phone and asked on the parents’ online group if anyone could pick up her children for school.

‘Thank God!’, one of the moms was close enough to swing by.

Once the children had gone she tried again to wake him but he was unresponsive. Desperately she called for an ambulance. There was no explanation for what was happening, he was as healthy as an ox and had not complained to her about anything.

The ambulance came and as he was unresponsive they took him away to the hospital for some tests. He was indeed as healthy as an ox, nothing showed up that would be a cause of concern. He just was not waking up.

Lying there, on the rocky bottom of his soul, bit by bit he started to feel a bit warmer. Somehow the lack of activity, the quietness and the missing stimuli of the day to day made him feel better.

Soon the darkness started to be populated by images of his children, of his wife chatting away while cooking or cleaning the house. He realized that he missed them so much that he needed to do something and get back to them.

The first time he tried a sharp pain shot across his chest. Maybe he needed to rest a bit more.

The second time he tried to get up he scratched his hand on the sharp stones covering the walls of his despair.

The third time though, he managed to get up on his knees and crawl to a bit of wall that seemed made of crystal and had a bit of shine to it.

It took John almost a month to recover, and he was tested and prodded but nobody was quite sure what had happened to him and he would not share the full details of his experience. He did not want to worry anyone.

John went back to work, to the gym, to the pub, to the council meetings, the parents’ meetings, the neighborhood watch, to the day to day, and this time, when he felt the clouds covering his vision, he would take some time out, snuggle on the couch and have a nap in front of the TV.

He had learnt that, to avoid the big falls, you need to repair the cracks as they come along.