Sunday, February 14, 2021

I think for the rest of my life this day will be hard.

The irony of womb being emptied into a watery grave, on the day of St. Valentine’s triumph. It is is a silent burden: a lone summit of isolation.

I had to make peace with this truth as it happened. In realtime. Carrying a truth like this, into the future, remorseful and muted, it would have broken me down slowly. With the flesh disintegrating bit by bit at every entrance, I already find it difficult to be touched.

I stand by my decisions wholly.

I feel no remorse.

I am not muted.

I’ve never been a fan of this day. But with the memories of my lost soul etched into the stonewalls of my conscious, I stumble into a deeply private sensitivity when these hours begin countdown.

What does it mean to be given the gift of life and refuse to accept? Is the response dependent on the reasoning? Has God seen my actions?

Do I care?

I don’t have the answer to any of these questions and there is nowhere to go to find them.

So they persist.

Each year identifying a new room which has yet to be explored.

An empty cavern: shrouded in darkness, where children once rejoiced in the tender innocence of adolescence. A tiny closet in which an old favorite has been stuffed; pockets brimming with the shreds of a character who is no longer cast for MainStage production. A grey-tiled bathroom, where the water no longer runs and the pipes gather to collect rust.

Somewhere in a back hallway I hear my childhood gently crying; unacknowledged by the vast space throughout which it echoes.

I often find myself lost on days like today.

A sensation that occurs so rarely, the emotions overwhelm me and temporary paralysis sinks in.

Two years. Twenty-four months. One hundred and four weeks. Seven hundred and thirty days.

I’m learning how to cope with it.