Inside Me

Horror. That’s what I felt. That’s what I still feel, except that now I feel short, quick flashes of it rather than a long, extended, endless knowledge that no matter what I do or say, he’s dying, that death cannot be convinced to go away and come back much, much later.

A friend of mine who survived breast cancer mentioned the chemo and illness flashbacks she still suffers to me the other day. Until she did, it hadn’t occurred to me that flashbacks are what I have been feeling, myself. Flashbacks. The feeling of a scream eternally trapped in the back of my throat, in slow motion without enough breath to push it into being. If I ever hear that scream, it will mean the end of my sanity.

Even so, the feeling still exists within me that I can do something to change what happened, to reverse it and to erase the memory from my mind forever, of stepping right up to the brink of insanity in the hospital chapel the night before we were given the horrifying news.

I am still so in love with him. I’m still enveloped in passion when I look at him. I still feel like he slipped right through my fingers.

I can’t let go. I’m filled with horror every time I ponder it. I can’t breathe. I need him.

I need you.