Year 8

8 years ago I had my transplant. My heart transplant.

And having been on the better side if not best of cases? I sit here pondering heavily, but happily.
How so? Well I think about all sorts of things-

Yes. So many thoughts...What a privilege to have time for them at all.

As for that dream(s)? I wanna finally put it down somewhere. What I saw while dancing the line between here and there.

TW: This is where it gets existential/afterlife talk. I saw what I saw.
If it is not your belief? It doesn't change what I saw.
And many men and women suffered for this through many faiths. You have a choice. Repeat mindless hate, or break chains and hear my words.

The most notable one I had was the bright hall. Pure white all the way in every direction. Yet I seemed to be sliding foward, like a floor eskalator in a airport.
Past different people. Some living, some dead.

What worried/alerted me to where I might be
(Afterlife. I don't believe in the standard idea of hell.)
is that only dead people saw me.

People like my grandpa, great-grandmas, other people I didn't know but in my soul I knew their time was up. They saw me.
Meanwhile, my mother, father, brother, friends and other living faces? I moved past unseen.
Kept going, till no-one was around. Then, the already pure whiteness, got brighter somehow. Be it so that even with my eyes shut I could still see it.

The voice. "So what are you? ... Are you done?"
"....I am tired. But...I am not done.... I am scared.
"It's okay...I love you."

Felt overwhelmed with emotion. Overpowered like a warm hug in winter. The feeling of every pleasant moment to come and go.
And then I awoke. For a little. The room shifting around me now like an odd twisted dream. It wasn't like what I had expierienced moments ago.
In an odd way, I can say there's a difference between the "dreams" that stood out to me, versus the drug induced madness. A feeling.

What Else?

I then went through ups and downs in recovery. Something I won't go too deeply into.
After that? It was a mental battle.
I've grown and changed alot over the last 8 years. I've suffered new pains, and enjoyed new pleasures.
I've been learning the art of loving things I used to recently. As well as acknowleging my wounds. Not the ones of surgury but of former friendships.
Nothing quite as vindicating as a therapist saying: "Wow that was really messed up"
am I right?
Of course it has to be followed with thee appropriate forgiveness. What that entails? Not forgiving the actions for say, but accepting that people simply are.
We cannot make someone change, or undo what they have done unto us. But we can choose how we carry that energy forward. We can perpetuate it, or learn from it. I chose the latter.

Even when I feel really vengeful, or torn up about it. I only let that baneful energy go on so far. I have a right to be upset, but I don't go around wishing they get hurt or something. Just met with equal treatment at worse.
So, take it from someone who has died, come back, and is still fed up with living.
Life's short, not guranteed, and you will waste alot of time angry at people if you let yourself.