Almost Lost by Beatrice Sparks

Mo…”
    â€œMo?”
    â€œHarmony.” Sammy winced and bit his bottomlip. “She was like the most wonderful thing that ever happened in my life. I…I loved her. She carbonated every red blood corpuscle in my bloodstream.” He winced again, so strongly it was almost like a small seizure. “We were tight as anything till…I blew it…like I blew everything else in my life.”
    â€œWhy do you suppose you did that?”
    His forehead wrinkled and his body tied itself into a hard knot. “I don’t know. I had had little problems before…you know…but they had never clobbered me so completely or even hardly at all. Then suddenly and in one black whirlwind swoop it was like the whole world came crashing down upon me, covering everything, maiming everything, and a dark sulfur cloud squeezed me out of my existence into an imprisoned unrealness of fermenting hostility and pain.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘fermenting’?”
    â€œGrowing, taking over, souring. My life became foreign to me! I was part of the unwashed, the unwanted, the hated—a troublesome alien—and I seemed to be forever cloning myself into more unacceptable, unworthy, unhappy mes because the misery was too much for one young, stupid, helpless kid to bear. I know that seems crazy enough to have me locked in a rubber room in a loony bin…”
    â€œNo, it doesn’t, Sammy. It just means that the beautiful, warm, belonging, protective, brightly colored balloon you had lived in all your life, up to that point, had been suddenly popped, deflated completely , leaving you flat and empty. You had to, then, in some sense, reinvent your life and your place in it. It’s too bad you weren’t able to get help right then.”
    â€œYeah, before things got so out of hand that wemay never be able to get my Humpty Dumpty self put back together again.”
    â€œOh, we’ll get Sammy Humpty Dumpty put back together again good as new, maybe even better. Never you fear.”
    â€œWe’ve got to do something soon! I can’t stand this pain and confusion and fragmentation much longer. I feel like I’m two people, the good person I want to be and the bad person I am! Actually I know this sounds completely out of orbit, but sometimes…in fact more and more often now…I feel like maybe I’m many different people.” He started crying softly. “Lately, I’ve even started thinking of names for some of the evil entities within me.”
    â€œDo you think that might be feeding your problem?”
    â€œCould be.”
    â€œCan it be dangerous to encourage any kind of negative thinking?”
    â€œYeah! We’ve gone over that!”
    â€œWhen things get bad, have you ever tried silently singing a ‘feel good’ song over and over till it kind of kicks into your brain? Just to show yourself that YOU are in charge?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œCould it hurt to try?”
    â€œGuess not, but I can’t think of one right now.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œYeah…blank…except…this is dumb, but when I was little my favorite song was…it’s silly…‘Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam to Shine for Him Each Day.’”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œI dunno. I guess nothing.”
    â€œUmmmmm. If it doesn’t mean anything, maybe it is silly.”
    Sammy became very serious. “No, it’s not silly. Let’s see. A sunbeam is part of sunshine, so probably it’s warm and friendly and comforting…”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œIt drives out the darkness.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œI used to like to sit in the meadow by myself sometimes when we went camping and just feel the warmth and brightness of the sun kind of hug me. I remember I could feel it almost like it was some kind of a soft, belonging, happy cuddling that I didn’t ever want to stop.”
    â€œClose your