Going down

Voices, impressions, strident and discordant jumbles shouting in whispered tones to be heard.

Stay awake. Read your book. Write something. Make something. Think on things. Try to puzzle out your feelings.

Oh, feelings. So many of them. I find myself swamped and mired in an inexplicable sadness, a sucking, gasping need to be drowned in affirmation and attention and unsolicited care. I have been harrying C for answers, for love, for affection, for a discussion of feelings and thoughts and other things unpleasant to the male species. I can't explain it any more than I can stop it. I find myself helpless to stem the tide of need and utter uncertainty that wells within me and gushes into the void around me.

Fear. It nibbles and gnaws, creeping into the smallest crevice and dribbling into my thoughts like a sweetly scented sewage, enticing and poisonous. I'm afraid of so much… and there is so much that I cannot even put to coherent thought. It just… lurks. Roils. Turns my insides to mush and makes a jumble of all that I know to be true.

I know his love. I am certain of it. But I am swept away on the current of my own anxiety and broken expectations and grief and disappointment and so many other things that come with the breaking of a young, promising life… my hand is outstretched, reaching for shore and safety and the hands of those who care for me, but they are just out of reach. Untouchable. Straining. Grasping. My fingertips slide past, centimeters from salvation, and I am lost in myself and my brokenness.

Someone save me, please. I'm going down amidst the wreckage of who I once was, and I'm running out of air. I knew how to swim, once; the knowledge has been stripped from me as surely as anything else. I'm drowning. I'm drowning, and even my cries for help feel fumbled.

One thought stands out amid the rest.

Go to bed. Snuggle up against your husband and close your eyes. You can try again tomorrow.

0 thoughts:

Post a Comment