The Stranger in the Rotted Byre

I’m dying. I may not be as “with it” as I once was, but that much I know for sure. The constant stream of visitors that appear around my bed every time my wrinkled, crusty eyes pull apart, all have that similar, pitying smile on their face; the kind of smile that says, “I’m sorry you’re dying. I am trying to be strong, but I am grappling with my own mortality and foreboding death.” They mean well.

At least I have visitors.

Agnes, my roommate, passed away without a single, consoling face by her side. My heart breaks at every thought of her passing on without so much as a comforting hand. She was quiet, and not much of a conversationalist, but we had a mutual understanding. Ours was a quiet friendship.

Coming in and out of consciousness grates at my nerves. With that sharp, fluorescent light, searing my retina and my ears focused on that constant beeping sound that reminds me that I still have a pulse, I can’t help but feel agitated. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to die. Not anymore. But I am ready. I feel like I’m attending my own funeral, with a procession of faces queuing to say their goodbyes. I am truly grateful to them, I am, but my body aches and my soul is tired; tired, but not restless like it was all those years ago.

***

My long, chestnut hair clings to my cheek as my lungs burn in my chest. The soaked, faded jeans stiffen against my legs, slowing me down as if I had jumped into a pond fully dressed instead of getting caught in a torrential downpour. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters anymore except easing the heaviness in my chest. I’m running so hard that I can hardly breathe. Lately, I feel like I can’t soothe my exasperated lungs, no matter how hard I try to calm the incessant drumming of my heart and gulp in the sweet, country air. It’s like my body is shutting down; like my time is up and my body knows it.

Lightning illuminates the sky and the roaring thunder angrily shakes its fist at the earth, and it all feels so far away, instead of dangerously close. I wish the lightning would hit me. That would be a small mercy. “How tragic,” people would say, “and so young too! Only 20!” They wouldn’t have to know that I practically begged for it to strike me dead.

I find myself in an old, abandoned barn, sobbing and surrendering to the sadness. The wooden walls are rotten and the beams are threatening to crash down. Another mercy, although I am not particularly fond of the idea of being pinned down and dying a slow, excruciating death. The lightning would be the better way to go. Quick and easy.

There was a time when these dark thoughts would have frightened me. They’ve become a kind of shadow of mine, always lurking in the recesses of my mind, reminding me of all the pain in bursting at the seams.

“What could she possibly know about pain?” I can hear them ask. And they would be right. From the outside, my life looks like a hallmark movie. I am from the perfect (modestly wealthy) family, in the perfect, quiet town, engaged to the perfect, handsome man. From the outside, my life looks enviable and I look like a spoiled, ungrateful, brat. It’s true. I want for nothing.

But something is missing. Something that poets write sonnets about, and mothers feel so forcefully course through them as they meet the eyes of their newborn child for the first time.

I feel the absence of love like a kite yearns for a large gust of wind on a beautiful day at the park.

Everything in my life feels like a cardboard cutout of what my life should be. I don’t know how to explain it better than that. I’m sorry. I just know that I have to get away. I have to run far, far away or I will die. In fact, I feel like I’ve been slowly dying my whole life; the parts of me that saw the world as a bright, new circus in town have shrivelled. The circus is rundown, abandoned and dark.

I collapse on a pile of dead hay beneath the cover of the decrepit shelter. I continue to sob, the cries shaking me to my core. But I can’t feel anything. It’s like I am watching myself through a thick, plexiglass and thick, beer goggles.

I bet you’re wondering what happened to make me break. The answer brings me shame and guilt.

The truth is, nothing pushed me over the edge. Today was an ordinary day without the slightest inconvenience. But still, I break. I need help, I know that I do. But how can I possibly explain to someone, let alone a stranger, what I don’t understand myself? How do I explain that I feel like I’m wearing a mask and going along with life like a marionette on a string?

The storm beyond the shelter rages and I can’t feel a thing.

I scream at the top of my lungs, just to try to spark something, anything, back to life.

The silence that follows is deafening.

“Are you all right?”

I nearly catapult up to the roof beams. Standing before me is a boy-well, man- maybe a few years my senior.

My face turns the shade of a bad sunburn. I am so used to wearing my mask that as soon as I take it down and expose the real me, I burn. Apparently, it is not socially acceptable to bellow your frustrations into the void.

“Sorry!” I say, and I just want to slinky away, “I, um...didn’t know anyone was in here.”

I get up, wipe the stray pieces of hay off my wet jeans, readying my escape.

“That storm looks nasty,” says the stranger, “It’d be better to wait it out.”

He sits down a comfortable distance away.

I hesitate, debating bolting back into the storm, or sitting awkwardly with this stranger. Eventually, I return to my seat, picking at the hay beneath me, painstakingly aware of the firm presence beside me.

I sneak a glance in his direction. He has dark scruff on his chin, broad shoulders, and shaggy hair a shade darker than mine. There are bags beneath his shadowed eyes, and for the first time in a long time, I recognize myself in someone else. The feeling washes over me so suddenly that I want to resume weeping. I can feel his sadness mesh with mine.

He turns and looks at me then.

“I come here a lot. This weather is my favourite. It reminds me of how small my life is, and yet-I feel...significant.”

I blink, taken aback, then turn to face the storm. Lightning flashes again and illuminates the sky, the crooked tree in the distance and the acres of empty fields.

As if a space heater is turned on, I feel the cold, dark fog around me begin to dissipate. I am no longer the panicked, restless version of myself that wants to run away from the void, away from life.

“Do you often feel insignificant?” I ask, curiosity grounding me to the present moment.

The left corner of his lips curves up.

“I’ve shouted at the sky once or twice before,” he replied.

I shift in my seats, embarrassed again to have my moment of vulnerability exposed.

“Yeah, I-”

“You’re sad.”

He says it with such finality that I know a denial would fall flat.

“Yeah,” I say, tears pooling in my eyes again.

“Yeah,” he repeats, “I know how you feel. I’m sorry.”

I believe him.

I swallow thickly, unsure what to say.

“Do you see that spider up there?” He nods toward the top corner of the barn. I follow his gaze to a beautiful spider web that sparkled in the rain. In the centre was an ordinary, gray spider.

“That spider makes some of the most beautiful webs I have ever seen,” he continues, “It baffles me how something so ordinary can make something so captivating. But I bet the spider doesn’t care, doesn’t even see value in its work. The spider simply makes a web to catch its prey. It isn’t even aware of the beauty it adds to the barn.”

I like the way that this stranger speaks, like his thoughts and mouth are connected without a filter. He is simply thinking out loud and I was tagging along.

He was the most random person I had ever met. His mind bounced from obscure topic to the next, each time marvelling at the simple beauties in the world that I have long forgotten to pay attention to. Soon, I am enraptured by this stranger who, with each story, each observation, awakens my soul. The ache in my chest, although not gone completely, releases its hold. Hours pass without my notice and soon we are in a conversation so deep that my soul is an active participant.

The storm ends, and just like that, I am reborn. The stranger stands up then, smiles so warmly that I melt like a marshmallow on a stick. He says goodbye and walked away.

I sit there a few moments longer, in utter stupefaction, awed that one conversation with a stranger could change my perspective so profoundly. I have never felt more seen in my life.

I walk home at leisure, replaying my afternoon conversation, and stopping to admire the beauty I had missed during my depressive episode. I feel a new strength rise within me; a strength that I had thought was forever gone, out like a light. Some people are like candles; They brighten a room and ignite the wicks of all they come across.

I never see the stranger again, although I search for him everywhere I go, in everyone I meet. I want to thank him, to let him know how deeply I appreciated his kindness that day. He could have ignored me, he could have left; instead, he sat and spoke with me, like a dear friend. I vow to be the light in others’ lives, to ignite their flames with kindness and love. Each day I become stronger. I find the love that I so desperately craved, not in being loved, but by loving.

***

The beeping from the monitor startles me awake. My eyes blur, then settles on a figure sitting on the chair beside my hospital bed. I turn to look at the familiar man beside me. I hadn’t seen him since that day in the barn sixty-three years earlier. He looks the same, hasn’t aged a day. He is smiling that warm smile and says my name. I don’t remember ever telling him my name, or getting his for that matter.

“I’m tired,” I tell him.

He nods.

He knows.

Standing gracefully he extends his hand.

“Let me take you home.”

A bright flame flickers out.