Levitate

​I could feel the world’s grip slipping. I felt my body being released from the cosmic force of gravity and I began to float. It was a sensation I could feel once, but I dreamt about it ever since. My ascent was slow, but powerful. I first began to float through my apartment, feeling the warm light move up my body as I traveled. Ever so slowly I opened my eyes and noticed that my ceiling poster was moving out of sight.

​Panic was at the back of my mind, but I actually just relieved. The city below didn’t seem to notice my abnormality as I slowly moved through my open window. The beauty if the sun hitting my building was something I never really noticed. I suppose most of the time I spent outdoors was time spent looking at the ground, never what was higher than my own elbows.

My body shifted, head pointing towards the sky and my eyes locked with that of the woman on the floor above mine. She stared back at me, nonplussed, but ponderous. I suppose she wondered what I saw doing floating so high above the ground, or just floating at all. She blew smoke from her perfect lips and took another drag of her cigarette before her eyes drifted from me to the billboard across the street.

I turned to see it was of a model advertising a perfume. I found it curious that the perfume wasn’t show anywhere in the ad almost as if the billboard was suggesting that if you see this beautiful, painted woman that you should buy their product. Shrugging to myself, I accepted that it wasn’t something I would understand. However, that smoking woman seemed to know.

The next floors passed. I saw an elderly family that I think I recall passing by once. The two sat on the same couch, one knitting while the other read a book. As I came into view their heads turned to stare at me. There was a familiar sadness in their eyes, a sadness brought on by financial or family problems. However, the old man placed his arm around the old lady and she leaned into him as she knit. There was love between the two, that was all they needed.

The next floors had their curtains closed and finally I reached the top floor. The room was well-furnished, fancy art and it was immaculate. A man sat in the corner of the room at his computer. There wasn’t sadness, but there wasn’t happiness either. I think he was upset about something, but I don’t think he knew what that was. There was always a terrible funk that something was missing from these people’s lives and soon I lost interest in trying to figure it out.

My body continued to climb ever on upwards and I turned to face the city below. I knew there were problems with it all. I knew that truly, but I still felt there should be more happiness. Everyone has a fundamental flaw that they are suffering from, yet I didn’t have the answer nor the ability to help any of them. It was a terrible set of circumstance, but that was it. That was life and I believe even I can accept that.

As the city grew further away the more insignificant the problems felt. True, I had never looked at anything with this perspective, but I still felt I should have. The joys of this world were as small as the horrors. Both worked hand-in-hand. Perhaps it would have been better if we enjoyed the small joys and ignored the small horrors, but I couldn’t help but focus on my own problems.

It was my fault she left to live on the floor above, my fault that I was so alone. That man on the top floor, although he had everything, he didn’t have anyone to share it with. Even if he did none of that would matter if he had someone at all. It was the catch 22 of the situation, but the decision was already made for you.

I was fired and faced the same problems that the elderly couple faced. I didn’t know how to make a living let alone put an honest day's work into something. It was a cruel twist of fate, but it was true. I am a nobody that was worthless on earth, like a piece of dust that would never fall on a forgotten shelf or land in someones eye. I was purposeless and like that particle of waste I would float, I levitate, I would ascend to a position most fitting for me.

I could no longer see the city and all I thought began to fade into the air with everything else. I felt like I was losing myself and I didn’t mind. I wondered if this was death or at least if it was what being dead felt like. Perhaps, because by the time I had entered the speckled void of space I felt like I knew everything and nothing. The sorrow and joy I felt was so unique to that moment that it changed me and who I was.

When I woke up in the hospital with bandages around my wrist and someone else’s blood pouring into my body I saw her so differently. She stood over me, hand warming my arm and an expression of worry I had never seen. She was scared, alone and didn’t want to lose me.

I lifted my arm and placed my hand on hers. I apologized, for everything I did up till now. She forgave long before I said those things, but I didn’t stop opening myself to her until I had finished. I did it for her, true, but I needed to hear myself say those things as well. Promises that things would get better, promises that I should have made, promises that I would hold forever filled the room. I think I cried more than her, but that moment we shared evenly as we pieced our love together.