THE WHISPERING TREES

All I asked for was peace. It didn’t come.

I meditated, drank magic potions from the most-earthly products, and practiced reiki. The filtered water lacking fluoride did nothing for my sanity. And the full moon rituals in the Mohave Desert left my heart empty and my soul more lost than when I started my road to recovery.

That’s when the therapy started.  

I was at rock bottom.

No, that’s not accurate. I was the moss, trapped under a rock in the belly of a ravine, and the dam broke releasing millions of gallons of water, suffocating and asphyxiating me. My only option was death. So, I went to the forest to die.

When I spoke of my forest death plan in my last group session, they humored me by explaining that my body, as it decomposed, would mesh and migrate into the soil. Though looking back, I’m quite sure meshed and migrated are not the proper terms when discussing decomposition. They never mentioned the flies or maggots, or the hungry beasts enjoying the flesh while it’s still palatable. I know, I searched the internet. The internet never lied to me like the therapists did.

I never meant for it to get this far. The therapist said the prescriptions would help. One for insomnia. One for the constipation. One for depression. One for lack of appetite. One for grief. One for… I don’t even remember anymore. The drugs mutated by brain cells and my ambition for life has left me.

The office doctors threw me out, well, as politely as they could, though the other patients didn’t take notice. Everyone there is looped up on one medication or another. You see, I know what they’re not telling me. This whole medical world is a lie used to cover up reality. They keep us sick. They feed us crappy food to screw with our digestive systems, then they claim they have a cure in the form of a pill. Except, the pills have side effects, which means they give you another pill to help with the nausea.

Dishonest people are the problem.

After all the lies the doctors told me, I couldn’t live like a normal human any longer. They don’t care about me. I told the receptionist my intent of decaying in the forest and her words crumpled my spirit even further, “Well, isn’t that nice. While you’re out there, look for the massive oak, right next to the elm. You’ll know it when you see it.” Of course, they’ll say anything to get you out of a lobby full of vulnerable patients. “Go on now. Find the small creek to the right of the mossy patch.” Her insensitivity disguised as mockery only blackened my soul. There was officially nothing more to lose.

I decided to follow the callous bitch’s advice and began my journey into the Otherworld by walking half the day on the edge where the dirt road meets the exhaust-fumed grass, lying in a state of half death, half-life. I could have laid down there and ingested the fumigated forest exit, or entrance, but the probability of someone finding me before my timed death made me realize that they want to keep me alive just to suffocate me. Not an ideal situation.

The fresh air smelled rancid. And I didn’t bother with a coat on the chilly October afternoon. There were enough drugs running through my system to keep me warm. Socks weren’t even necessary. Only a thin piece of leather trapped between my bare feet and the hardened dirt reminded me of the rock and hard place I lived in and needed escape.

Massive oaks, elms, and maples scattered the landscape. My obnoxious belly snarled as I considered the delicacy of live spiders and cock roaches. It was on a reality television show I once watched in the ward I was locked in for three weeks. According to the wilderness guru, we can live under this tree canopy forever, that is, as long as we don’t eat the venomous berries or use poison oak as toilet paper. They take the fun out of everything. 

They even called me a freak when I questioned why the landscape looked fake and the buildings appeared impossibly real. As they laughed at me, I sang the chorus of that song where they pave paradise to lay asphalt for a parking lot. There’s money in that you know. Maybe that’s why I’m broke—I never built a parking lot.

As I gravitated deeper within the shedding trees, my sandals crunched on dried and dying brown and yellow leaves. Up ahead, there was an opening in the tree line. Not one from a tractor or conservation officer’s SUV. It was an unnatural spectacle that somehow seemed natural, especially because I don’t even know what natural is any longer. They hide that from us too.

I continued with nothing more than a dirty nightgown on my body and sandals under my bare feet, when a mysterious woman appeared from a mist of the woodland’s fissure. I assumed dew clouded my peripheral, just like my mind. Was she here to die too? Maybe we could die together. Finally, a friend I can trust.

She wore a soiled white gown under a hooded wool-stained cloak. Her over-sized clothing dragged and collected dirt and leaves from the forest floor as she approached me. Fire emitted in small patches with no particular pattern on her cloak. Burnt smudges spotted the garment like she had forgotten she became ablaze and patted her fire out.

The hems of her sleeves were scorched and crackled, slowly smoldering the material. The ends of the cloth singed and drifted to the ground. That burnt material never reached the dirt. Instead, the embers disappeared before my drug-induced eyes. I determined then that, yes, we could be friends.

She waved for me to follow her.

I did, because my sanity was an eggshell—only a thin membrane kept my brains and sadness from oozing out of the cracked surface.

Her arm lifted and an old piece of flesh with moldy finger nails protruded from the burning, but not burning sleeve. Wrinkled hands with old people spots, that’s what my sister used to call the blemishes, old people spots. It sounded funny now. Old People spots. It’s not a tongue twister, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue naturally either, does it? The belly grumbling fell away to strained abdomen muscles. They didn’t think I was funny, but they were wrong.

As we walked, side by side, the long grass parted, creating a larger pathway for us to travel into the abyss together. The unlevel terrain reminded me of the wobble board at the gym to help strengthen my knees and ankles. Maybe I was never meant for balance in my life. A yoga master would have called the hike peaceful. The tree pollen made me sneeze.

Up ahead, the forest trail opened to a space of level land with limbs and foliage growing around a secret forcefield that kept the wild brush out of a small circled space. Flat slate stones paved the area. A thick wooden bench, not smooth, but gnarled from the curly willow it was created from, curved around half the perimeter of the circle. The scorching woman motioned for me to sit. I hesitated, looked around the strange energy dome that kept the wild out, and slowly bent into the wooden seat. It was far more comfortable than the unlevel terrain.

We sat across from each other in silence for too long. I wanted to lay down and nap. My eyelids started to fall and my vision grew cloudy. All I wanted was a normal life, but instead I hit a wall, broke my nose, and the only doctors to relieve the pressure were psychologists handing out prescription drugs.

My sleepy eyes jolted wide when she stated so loud and so matter-of-factly that frantic paranoia skipped through my veins. “You have two spirits swirling inside you.” Her voice matched her hand spots—old. “Not one good or one bad.” Her tone changed from a wise old woman to an agitated angry dog. She swiped her flaming sleeve at me as though she wanted to slap my face. “You’re missing the point.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

In all honesty, instead of speaking aloud, I reflected on my utter disappointment and lack of compassion with myself and my family. The delusions of my perfect world cascaded into a forgotten well that drained its water supply centuries ago, adding to the disease that can only be forgiven in death.

They broke me.

“Shush. You speak too much. Too many conversations up there.” She slid closer and poked my forehead with her withered, wrinkled finger. I forced my mouth shut. “Your spirits are alive and they struggle.”

“I’m always struggling. It’s like..”

Smack “Not therapy session!”

I rubbed my warm, probably bruised cheek and chose silence this time when she spoke. This woman I’d never met seemed like an old friend. She spoke more truth than all the therapists over the past seven years. There was a calmness about her that quieted my thoughts and erased my nightmares. It was as though I could feel my frozen toes again.

“Both light and dark encompass your spirit and both are near explosion. You must allow them balance, yet you fight them as though you can…” her voice turned into high-pitched and screechy, “control them.”

Control. Even in this magical world, control reigns highest and I have none of it.

Smack “Silence!” She then huffed in aspiration. “You must learn to listen without judgement, without thought. Allow the sounds to infiltrate your being, not your ears.”

She gracefully adjusted her position on the curly willow bench. Only her crooked nose protruded from behind her hood. Our sitting position was awkward. It was difficult to read all her gestures. Instead, I focused forward and pondered the energy dome surrounding our sacred space. I sat between dream and reality, watching a gray squirrel squeak and grunt in a nearby elm tree. With so much silence between us, it didn’t feel like eyes studied my every move, every word, but instead, a sense of peacefulness fell over me.

Words fell from my lips. “Why have you brought me here? It feels too—what’s the word—special, for who I’ve become.”

A sigh blew out from under her white hood. She pulled her headdress back. Like a slow-motion clip of a movie during an accident scene, as her hood fell from her head, her white stringy hair curled and returned to a youthful appearance. The old woman spots on her hands tightened and her complexion seemed angelic, smooth. The once high-pitched voice softened as she responded. “Your inquiry is genuine; therefore, I will be genuine.”

Before my tired eyes, her white cloak of burning flame singed and transformed into dancing sparks, her robe disappeared, and the remnant of ashes sauntered up to the sky. The old woman shape-shifted into a middle aged fiery red head. Her white cloak transformed into a green, elegant gown made of the finest silks.

I couldn’t explain my thoughts. I was in awe rather than fear. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. At that exact moment, I had a flashback of my reflection in a mirror years before my mom died and my sister started lying. My mom’s thin fingers had just finished pinning my sequined veil in my hair and my sister’s eyes teared. I know now that those tears were from an alligator because three years later I learned she was sleeping with my husband. And somehow, I’m the one having a therapy session in a dense forest that shouldn’t be at this time of year.

The fiery woman placed her hands in her lap, palms up, bringing me back to—reality?—when she said, “Humans are hateful little creatures. They turned this beautiful natural world into a waste dump and use control to repress the many, while the few live in a world of materialism, not love.” She paused, and this time I kept my mind empty of all thoughts and judgements. “You know all of this. That knowledge is what fuels your darkness.”

“I can’t fix them. That’s what’s the most troublesome. They hate and take and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

My focus adjusted up to the gray squirrel in the far elm, and swiveled back to my own hands, wrinkling, as purpling spots appeared. For the first time, I truly saw the god-like creature sitting to my right.

“You came here to die, yes?” There was no tremor in her voice. No disrespect or judgement, which made my response an easy one.

“Yes.” There was no light way to say this fact.

“You have a choice you know.”

I did know because my mother always said that we had free will. That we all have a choice. Apparently, it was her free will to die and leave me here alone.

“You can die here. Yes. Samhain is the only day of the year when the veil between your world and my world is at its thinnest. The living can walk amongst the dead and the dead amongst the living.”

I didn’t understand and said so.

She continued, “there are always options for humans. Do you know why?” Tears rolled down my cheeks because a deep part of me knew the answer, but most of me couldn’t grasp the concept. The answer was lodged deeper than any doctor or drugs could unearth. She resumed, “Because your soul is celestial. Life is your choice, your choosing.”

Powerful and profound words are far more captivating coming from a mystical being rather than a therapist.

“There isn’t much time left. What do you choose?”

I glanced down at my withering hands and wondered what the rest of me looked like. Did I look like my mother, my grandmother? In this enchanted realm, was I even real or am I still in the doctor’s office and the sedative they gave me is creating this fantastical dream?

If I die here, I die there. Then what? An afterlife of wandering and haunting angry people. But I’m angry. Does that mean I’ll haunt myself? —except, I think I already haunt me. I am the ghost that clouds my vision, the screamer that never quiets. I am the parasite that eats away the host. I am the host, slowly decomposing while maggots and beasts feast on my flesh.

“This is no life.” My body tightened and convulsed. “The only thing I can control is me.” Tears seeped from my eyes. “I have free will.”

“Is this your decision?”

I nodded. Just as the angelic figure raised her arm to perform her magic, two words escaped, “Help me.”

“Help yourself.”

Her comment pissed me off with a rage I hadn’t experienced since before mom’s death. I jolted upright, swinging my arms like the lunatic they perceive me as and screamed, “Help yourself?!? Are you fucking kidding me?” My right eye started to twitch. “I have an other-worldly being sitting in front of me and that’s the best advice you can give? Help yourself?”

I picked up a stone and threw it as hard and as far as I could toward the gray squirrel. It bounced off the energy dome and landed at my foot. My chest heaved. Should I throw the stone at this fake entity my mind made up? I looked to the stone then back to the fiery woman.

She smiled up at me. Her tone even, “Good, you have fire still burning in your soul. Take that passion back with you. You’ll need it to recover from the darkness you’ve casted around yourself over the past thirteen years.”

I slumped back onto the gnarly wooden seat, closed my eyes, and wondered what to do next.

When I woke up in my dirty apartment with moldy dishes in the sink and puke on the carpet, a dreamy state enveloped me. It was a struggle to free myself from the drugs charging through my blood. As I slowly sat up using the couch arm for support, I wiggled my dirty bare toes. My nightgown ripped and torn. The empty prescription bottle half stuck out from under the table.

It had been nearly three months since I cleaned my apartment and I knew it wouldn’t clean itself. I filled six garbage bags. The last items to throw away were in the medicine cabinet, which was full of translucent orange and green plastic bottles. I read each name aloud and declared, never again. The Oxycontin was the last to remove and discard. I hesitated. That one was my favorite. Maybe just one more, then I’ll throw it out, I thought. I pressed, pushed, and twisted the lid open. Just one more. I angled the bottle to get out that last one and instead of a pill, a note fell into my hand.

The strip of paper read, “Help yourself and you shall be free.” The paper then flamed and burnt into a mist just as the doorbell rang.

I pulled myself from the floor and peeked through the eye hole. The pharmacist delivered several boxes, a three-month supply of opioids.

-RADolence, 2023