With Broken Wings (2013)

Friends and Other Funny Things

A little short story I came up with one day in trying to express how I felt after losing him. Yes it is sad but this work is not for lying through my teeth and pretending to be okay, it's about letting out my grief and learning to deal with it so that I can get through this and move on. A slow process. 

I wanna sing. I wanna shout. I wanna scream till the words dry out. 

My lungs seem to be empty, like no matter how many breaths I take it's never enough. Like there's a hole allowing all the air to escape with every inhale. My head spins and I rest it against the cool glass in an effort to keep myself from passing out. I feel like I'm going to puke.

My stomach rumbles softly but I've lost my appetite. the thought of food makes me feel sick. I haven't eaten since breakfast, which feels like years ago now. It's only been three hours. So much has changed since then. Why should I be eating when there are more important things to do, like comfort loved ones and wipe away tears. Making tea and forcing down something sweet pales in comparison. 

The tears begin to slip through the cracks between my closed eyes and pour down my cheeks in a salty river of sorrow. This sucks. More than that, it's going to be the death of me. I can't take all of this pain at once, all of these questions that I don't know how to answer. Maybe now I never will.

It feels like I've been in a head on collision with a train. I lost. I run a hand through the half-knotted mess that is my hair and sigh. I look like a proper mess. If anyone saw me now, they might really think I'd been run over by a bus.

My hair was all over the place from having run my fingers through it. I clenched my hands together tightly, resting them on my lap as I opened my eyes and stared through the small pane of glass. The world looked as if it were still turning. Why shouldn't it be?

Dried leaves in shades of red, yellow, orange and brown paint the ground in a way that I once would have thought to be beautiful. Now it's just a messy pile of leaves sitting on the front lawn after having been raked together.

The sun shone brightly, warming my face even through the window and reflecting off of glossy cars and shining rooftops. Today it seemed almost too bright, too cheerful. Nothing was right this afternoon and it might never be again.

I wiped the tears that were beginning to dry stickily on my face away with the back of one hand. I just needed to clear my head. It wasn't as bad as I was making it out to be. Surely things would get better. Someday. This wasn't the end for us. Right? It couldn't be.

I glanced at the family photo hanging on the wall behind me and smiled a little. We could push through this couldn't we? Make it past this roadblock together? I hoped so. Hope was all we had left anymore.

As I stared vaguely at the sea of faces, I trailed my fingers along the wall beside the frame. I reached out but stopped just inches away from the glossy photo, afraid to mark it in any way. I didn't want to leave fingerprints on his face.

My eyes glided over the familiar, smiling expressions of my relatives and I almost burst into tears all per again. The people I loved most in the world, the ones I'd take a bullet for without hesitation and do anything to keep from as much pain as I could prevent, they were suffering right now just like I was.

They need me more. With this thought I shake away the thoughts of grief, guilt and confusion and push myself up into a standing position. They need me more. Grief could wait. Self pity and crying myself to sleep came second place to these people. They were my heart and soul and I would be there for them until my dying day.

I would give everything inside of me, everything that I had to give and more if it helped them through this. I would do whatever it took to take away even an infinitesimal part of their pain because I hated to see them suffering.

If they needed me to wipe their tears and tell them that we'd make it together, that things would be okay, then that's what I'd say. If they needed a shoulder to cry on, someone to talk to, someone to make them got chocolate at three am, someone to sing them to sleep or even just someone to hold them right and promise never to let go, then that's who I'd be.

If they needed me to sit with them and watch the sunrise, to stay up late reassuring them that things would be okay, pretend like none of this had ever happened or even just give them some space then that's what I'd do. They would know that they aren't alone and that they were loved, so deeply, they would know that someone cared. I could give then that. I WOULD give them that if it killed me.

We would be okay. Maybe not now but eventually. Things can only go up from here and they always get better. Or so I've heard.