Finding solace in an unlikely source

I'm listening to Oasis' Champagne Supernova, reflecting on the past week. This injury has gotten a little bit easier to manage and deal with, but the spectre of it still looms large over my head. There's one image that's particularly strong in my head, and it's an object that came into my life unexpectedly but at the most perfect timing.

I moved in June, but I still haven't unpacked every box. One is a couple feet away from my bed, piled high with all sorts of objects and knickknacks. One night, when I was feel quite despondent and sorry for myself, I idly picked up the trinket closest to me, a Rubik's-sized box with cartoon imaging on it. I had no idea what it was or why it was on the box, as I'm a) not a huge comic book fan, and b) couldn't ever remember buying anything — especially in the last decade or so — that would have been comics-related.

Opening it, I saw this little rubber figurine of a character called Spawn. Who? I thought to myself, attaching Spawn to the little plastic stand he came on. The name was vaguely familiar to me, but put Spawn in a lineup with other comic superheroes and the word guess would be a rather generous term for my trying to identify him.

So, I Googled this Spawn character (human name: Al Simmons), and found the following:

Spawn struggled to find a way to free himself from Hell's control and recapture his humanity. Attacks from both Heaven and Hell were coming faster and faster, and Spawn was on the verge of losing himself to the violence and the evil. Salvation arrived in the form of a mound of festering garbage - The Heap, an emissary of the Purgatory, a power equal to Heaven and Hell that Spawn had never encountered before. They endowed him with a host of new abilities that would enable him to overcome the worst both Heaven and Hell had to offer.

While these powers are not directly described, they appear to give Spawn control over all the elements and other aspects of the natural world.

As I sat on my bed, cupping Spawn in my hand, it got me thinking a lot about what I shared in common with Spawn. We were both cursed with a type of hell, which greatly changed who we were and what our outlooks on life were. Salvation from this hell didn't come in a shiny package of glory or beauty, but rather just an ugliness that grew to strength to get past things. For Spawn, it was garbage; for me, it was the passage of time, of day after day after day of feeling every emotion on the spectrum and struggling to make sense of it all. This emotional rollercoaster ride was/is not fun at all, but there's one good thing about it: I'm at least feeling these emotions instead of them being bottled away deep inside, and the people in my life have been good enough to be by my side with every loop, twist and turn.

While Spawn's life story took a much darker route than I'd like mine to take, I can't help thinking that it was great timing to come across this four-inch tall figurine. I have no idea why or how it got in my box or why it was Spawn as opposed to any other comic book character, but I'm glad I found that particular one.