“I love you.” I heard from across the room. I looked up and saw no one. I proceeded to continue to work on some notes. “I love you,” I heard again, yet this time closer. I looked up and expected to see someone standing there, yet there was nothing. Not going to lie I started to freak out a little bit. “I love you.” I heard once again, but as if someone had just whispered it into my ears. I was startled, freaked out, and just sat in that silence looking around. Where in the world was that voice coming from?
I decided to the leave the room, so I got up and walked out of the house and down the road. Maybe I just needed to clear my head some, after all I had been in that house for most of the day and needed some fresh air. As I walked along the road I came to a bridge, me being an adventurer at heart (you can ask my mom to confirm this) decided to climb up it a bit to sit at a high vantage point to overlook the water below. Thankfully cars rarely came around onto this bridge, so I didn’t have any fears of someone startling me off the railing. There I sat, looking out at the setting sun, taking deep breathes in and exhaling out slowly to calm my nerves.
After a few minutes of this, I started thinking about what I heard. For again no one was there, and why would someone tell me that they loved me? What worth did I hold in another’s eyes? For you see, if I am honest with you for a moment, I have given my love freely and unconditionally and have had it thrown back in my face, trampled and crushed. After several of these beatings, it would seem clear that I am not meant to be loved. These thoughts continued to grow in my mind and heart, “You aren’t worthy of love, you aren’t meant for love, and you are always going to be abandoned and forgotten about.” All of this started welling up inside of me until I couldn’t it take it any more. I broke.
All these lies, flooding in and consuming me broke my heart, let fear settle in, and then finally I just couldn’t take it any longer. I jumped off the bridge and landed in the cold water. Water over my head, no air to fill my lungs there I sat underneath the rushing river surface. I wanted to stay like that forever, because there in that water everything was silenced. What once had been a beautiful setting, turned into a not so pretty scene. I continued to hold my breathe, refusing to come to the surface, for when I did I knew it would all start up again. But, then in the midst of the silence I heard it, the gentle whisper, so clear and true, “I love you.” Suddenly I surged to the surface and found myself at the river’s bed and able to climb out. I sprawled out and in the midst of gasping for air I cried. I let go of it all and just cried.
Once the sobbing resided, I finally calmed myself a bit and just looked up and there standing above me was a deer. I didn’t flinch, I hardly even breathed in fear that I would startle it. It looked down at me, with big brown eyes, yet somehow familiar. We just looked at each other a moment, then I reached my hand up, very slowly to touch its nose and it leaned into my hand. I sat up on the rock I was on and looked again and saw two more deer in the distance frozen, starying at the scene. A branch broke in the background and the trance was gone the deer pranced off. Still unsure of what just happened I decided to lay back down, maybe I had hit my head on a rock or something. But, as I started to lay back down something in me told me to get up and run back to the house. So I sprinted across the uneven pathway I usually ran on and finally reached home just before the sun set.
To be continued…
