2006...

2007...

2008...

1st december 2008, Monday.


Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but it does pass. Even for me.

It was a crippling thing, this sensation that a huge hole had been punched through my chest, excising my most vital organs and leaving ragged, unhealed gashes around the edges that continued to throb and bleed despite the passage of time. Rationally, I knew my lungs must still be intact, yet I gasped for the air and my head spun like my efforts yielded me nothing. My heart must have been beating, too, but I couldn't hear the sound of my pulse in my ears; my hands felt blue with cold. I curled inward, hugging my ribs to hold myself together. I scrambled for my numbness, my denial, but it evaded me.

And yet, I found I could survive. I was alert, I felt the pain - the aching loss that radiated out from my chest, sending the wracking waves of hurt through my limbs and head - but it was manageable. I could live through it. It didn't feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I'd grown strong enough to bear it.

Whatever it was that had happened that time - and whether it was their words, the adrenaline, the dreams, or the hallucinations that were responsible - it had woken me up.

For the first time in a long time, I didn't know what to expect in the morning.

I wondered how long this could last. Maybe someday, years from now, if the pain would just decrease to the point where I could bear it - I would be able to look back on those few short months that would always be the best of my life. And, if it were possible that the pain would ever soften enough to allow me to do that, I was sure that I would be grateful for as much time as you had given me. More than I'd asked for, more than I'd deserved. Maybe someday I'd be able to see it that way.

But what if this hole never got any better? If the raw edges never healed? If the damage was permanent and irreversible?

You changed my whole life. I don't know what you did to me with your love.


As if you had never existed.

I thought in despair. What a stupid and impossible promise to make! You could steal my pictures and reclaim your gifts, but that didn't put things back the way they'd been before I had met you. The physical evidence was the most insignificant part of the equation. I was changed, my insides altered almost past the point of recognition. Even my outsides look different - my face sallow. I probably looked closer to a zombie.

As if you had never existed? That was insanity. It was a promise that you could keep, a promise that was meant to be broken by me as soon as we made it.

I have to let you go and hopefully, my very own superhuman would come and rescue me.

Monday, December 01, 2008