Soulbond

Stage VI: Distillation

Yuri felt tired in all levels of being. She was supposed to be dead by now, there was supposed to be peace... She was sure that this silent void was what she needed, but even so, when her conscience was slipping, back in her bathtub a few hours ago, and she heard the words "I need you!", "I love you!", something changed inside Yuri.

On the inside of her microcosm, she stopped lamenting and started fighting for life, a desperate, losing battle against the symptoms of hypovolemic shock. Flashes of people around her shouting orders and working on her body.

Yuri felt her heart stop twice.

On the first time, there was a strong squeeze, her whole chest seemed to rip apart and then a sudden realization - this is it! This is how it ends!

Not knowing how this could even happen, rationally, Yuri felt her being slipping in a void inside the void, float in a darkness in the darkness that was the absence of absence. There was nothing there aside from absolute dark, but she felt herself everywhere.

She drifted in her own consciousness. And all she felt was lamenting and wailing. And from her will to understand her situation and live again, an afterimage formed in the Void: word made matter, verbum caro factum est. Yuri saw in a distance a broken mirror, slowly dripping blood.

She wanted to look at the mirror - no, she NEEDED to gaze herself desperately, to understand what she was, what was 'Yuri' when she was still alive. But the mirror was broken in an infinity of shards, each one dripping blood. Yuri could not see herself beyond a generic human shape, as the mirror glass was so bloodied and battered.

Yuri then sensed a second presence behind her. A third. A fourth. She turned around in panic and saw an infinity of Yuris, all alike and portraying the same dead face, the same vitreous eyes, the same absence of mouths.

Each one of the Yuris started to cut their arms, just like she did so many times before. Each cut was followed by a shattering sound and another crack in the mirror. Each cut from each dead Yuri made the glass even more shattered and bloody.

Yuri despaired from the sight and the sound, then suddenly understood it all. Each time she cut, driven by self-consciousness or self-hatred, it was because of the image of herself she wanted to show people, to impress them. When she failed to impress, she took it on herself and let the blood come out.

Ultimately, this all happened because Yuri didn't saw herself as worthy of love, didn't saw how much she meant for her closest loved ones. This made her fear of external judgement unbearable! She had to punish herself for drawing attention always in the wrong manner, getting from people only cruelty, not love. So, she cut.

And each cut led her own image to distort more and more, making the glass shatter like her Ego was shattered. THE MIRROR WAS HERSELF! Boldended by the sudden realization, Yuri jumped into the mirror to become one with it.

Jung calls the individuation of the soul, when one accepts one's shadows as an integral part of oneself and unites with them. Not yielding to the dark side, rather coming to terms with its existence. And Yuri did exactly that. She accepted the wounds as an integral part of herself and her story. Wherever her soul was destined to go, she would go in peace.

Then a strong shock.

Yuri gasped and cried - she was alive again, in the ambulance, feeling symptoms from the shock, as well as from her brief cardiac arrest. Paramedics around her in frantic activity, the offending lights piercing her eye, and a figure in the corner crying copious tears... the same vague acquaintance from school from whom she borrowed a french grammar, crying madly and repeating the same words that just brought her deliverance: "I need you!", "I love you!".