The Year I Was Not Ready
The Year I Was Sent to Soulia
I watched my own body from the corner of the room.
My mother was holding my face, whispering my name.
My father stood by the window, staring into the rain as if it could answer him.
Somewhere, a bell rang.
When I turned around, a black cat was waiting for me.
“You died,” it said calmly. “Heart failure.”
Its voice carried no sorrow, no judgment. Just fact.
“I am your guide. You are to be judged.”
The cat led me to a door that hadn’t existed before. When it opened, the world folded inward. Time twisted like smoke. My life replayed itself in fragments—laughter, cruelty, missed chances, small kindnesses I barely remembered.
Then everything went still.
The place beyond the door was neither heaven nor hell. The ceiling was hidden behind white mist. There was no visible light source, yet a faint crimson glow filled the air.
A single chair stood in the center.
I sat.
A figure entered—faceless, silent, immense.
“You are not ready,” it said.
“You will spend one year in Soulia. After that, we will decide.”
Before I could ask anything, the world shifted.
Soulia was not beautiful.
It wasn’t ugly either. It simply was.
The sky was pale silver. The streets were quiet. The air felt heavy, as if every person carried invisible weight.
I could do nothing there.
I couldn’t focus. Words slipped off pages. Conversations dissolved into noise. A thick fog lived inside my head. Grief, though I didn’t know for what, pressed against my ribs.
At night, I cried without understanding why.
I felt broken. Useless.
I blamed the universe. I blamed God. I blamed myself.
Then she knocked.
Her name was Corin.
She lived next door and spoke gently, as if she remembered what silence felt like.
“I had depression on Earth,” she told me. “You don’t escape it by fighting it.”
She didn’t offer miracles. She offered presence.
“Stop trying to win,” she said. “Just sit with it. Name it. Let it exist.”
It sounded foolish.
But I tried.
Instead of asking why this was happening, I began asking what it was teaching me.
The pain didn’t disappear.
But it softened.
I started noticing small things—the warmth of tea in my hands, the way silver clouds drifted over Soulia’s sky, the quiet strength in other people’s eyes.
For the first time, I saw how fragile we all were.
And how beautiful that fragility could be.
A year passed.
The cat returned without warning.
Back in the mist-filled chamber, the faceless judge waited.
“What did you learn?” it asked.
I thought of Corin.
Of nights that didn’t end.
Of mornings that eventually did.
“I learned that resistance is louder than acceptance,” I said.
“And that weakness is not failure. It is a door.”
Silence.
Then the sound of a gavel.
Darkness.
I woke up in my own bed.
Morning light poured through my window.
The house smelled like breakfast.
My mother was in the kitchen. My father was reading the newspaper.
I started crying.
Not from fear.
From gratitude.
On the bus to school, I watched the sky—so blue it almost hurt. Students laughed. Someone argued about homework. Life moved forward, unaware of how close it always stands to ending.
Soulia felt distant now.
But sometimes, when I hesitate before judging someone, or when I sit quietly with my own sadness instead of pushing it away—
I wonder if that year was not a dream.
But a gift.
