Silent Soul

Stress has a funny way of making itself known. Sometimes it can be subtle, only causing someone to lose a little hair, making that cow lick look more like a bald spot. Sometimes it's like walking through a field of landmines. Take one wrong step and you explode. Only in this sense, you explode internally by having sixteen panic attacks at one time. Trying to breathe is like sticking a freshly heated fire poker right on your lungs while swallowing thousands of gallons of water as you're trying to swim to the surface of an endless abyss of a cold, dead, ocean.

Then the stress decides to hit you day in and day out, never giving your mind the rest it needs and never giving your body the chance to recuperate. This wonderful anomaly invites death to kiss you while driving home from work one random Tuesday night. Then you wake up in a hospital bed. Except you didn't actually wake up, instead you are standing next to the shell that you used to reside in and the only thing keeping it alive is a tube shoved down its throat making it breathe. That unfortunate truth is my cruel and undeniable reality.

I have been here for three hundred and twenty-seven horrifyingly miserable days, stuck with my dead body. It was impossible for me to grasp at first. I screamed to the doctors and nurses that I was actually here and that I was alive, but they would literally walk right through me; which was and still is extremely disturbing.

My husband, my sister, and my grandparents all came to see me. Every time they arrived I would plead with them hysterically to look at me, to hear me when I said that I loved them and that I was still here, but they never could. I tried to follow my husband one night, but the further I went from my body the quieter the world became. Sometimes, an iridescent door with every imaginable and every unimaginable color would appear. It would always be covered in golden designs up and down the sides and the door knob looked like a giant diamond. 

I decided to touch it once. It was cool on my fingertips and there was electricity etched into every vibrant particle of the colorful wood. The door had a beautiful humming sound from the other side singing to me to let go. That everything would be absolutely okay, just come on in, but something inside me wouldn't let that happen.

Ever since then, when I would walk away from the door, a scream would echo in my mind causing me to fall to my knees. I'd hold my head and scream along with it in agony. Just as quickly as it had started though, it would disappear. When I would open my eyes I'd find myself on the floor next to my body. Something was holding me hostage in this world. Something that tormented me to my death bed leaving me tethered to this damn pathetic body.

Before I first woke up, I was in a daze, my ears kept ringing, my chest felt heavy, and my eyes refused to focus. My arms and legs felt as if every inch of my skin was shredded by glass and my head felt as if someone had just taken a bat and bashed it in. The sirens were the first thing that became clear in this pit of pain and darkness. I blinked hard trying to focus, but my eyes continued to hide the world. I could tell I was in my car because the horn was blaring pitifully. The screaming sirens caused the pain in my head to intensify.

"She's over here! Get the stretcher!" I heard a deep voice yell. I felt relief swarm over me and I relaxed.

The next thing I knew I was laying on the hospital floor. Beeping from the monitors woke me and I struggled to stand. I tried to ease up to keep the dizziness at bay. When I was finally able to realize my surroundings I became paralyzed with fear of the horrific truth of my current state of being.

The visits from my loved ones became less often and wanting to find what was holding me captive here became impossible. My mind refused to remember what it was that it needed to know to move on. I began to listen to the world around me and would watch the doctors and nurses like a movie when I could. I wished every now and then that I could have a bag of popcorn to watch because sometimes things became intense.