Lying Angels

My mother named me Angelina-Jean, but some of you know me as AJ Soloman.  She named me Angelina because of her guardian angel and Jean because of her mother. A guardian angel saved her life when she fell through the ice at sixteen.

Mom would consult Calgary, the angel,  for all life decisions. She had a clear pointed crystal that hung on a delicate silver chain, and she would ask Calgary yes or no questions. For a  yes answer, the pendulum would swing in a circle. For a no answer it would swing back and forth. Mom would  ask should I try for that promotion at work? The pendulum swung back and forth. And all though she frowned at the answer, she believed it was for the best. Every time Mom asked,  her angel kept saying no. She worked twenty years at the same hotel as a housekeeper and believed until the moment she took her last breath  that God had a plan and guardian angels never lied and always pointed you in the right direction.

Two things happened when I was thirteen. I won the Philadelphia city-wide fiction contest for my age group and my mother presented me with my own pendant to consult  my own guardian angel. Teachers and other adults had said I was soo talented and I should be a writer.  I asked  my guardian angel, Catrella, every day will I be a successful writer. Sometimes I asked  should I be a writer? The pendulum always swung in a large circle.

A liberal arts degree and one craptastic job after another, I am now forty years old and my writing career is not existent. It’s rejection after rejection and a mountain of  bad reviews. I just couldn’t believe that this could be happening. And Catrella, my supposed guardian angel,  had lied to me all these years.

I went to a  real psychic she laughed at me and said I had no angel.   I am tired of being a pawn in “God’s” plan. There is no God and no guardian angel. All my life wasted away.

There is a man I know, a close friend of twenty years, he asked me time and time again to marry him.  He is rich and I  do cherish the time we spend together, I just don’t love him like that. In fact,  the idea of fucking him on our wedding night makes me nauseous.  I asked the crystal about him and it said no to him and yes for writing. Now, I am making my own choices.

I deleted my hard drive, millions of words gone. I put down the pen. Burned all the notebooks and rejections letters. How bad could it be? Being with him has got to be better than chasing a fantasy.