Before the sleep

Chapter seventeen

Mommy

You know that feeling you get sometimes when life keeps kicking you while you're already down and you just feel yourself slipping away slowly? That's the one I'm having right now except it's ten times worse since I know for a fact that I'm slipping away. That's the doctors' daily topic now.

They are getting ready to pack my body in a coffin and seal it underground. I can't say I blame them now because I know what's going on inside of my head. They're disappearing - the little details, the memories. I'm trying to hold on to them but I can't.

My world is being flipped upside down now that I know there's no saving grace for me. I'm going to leave my boys alone. I'm going to die.

I thought I knew what losing your hard earned blood diamond felt like when Joseph and I took a break while he recovered from his family problems back in college. Now, I know that feeling was just a fragment of the real lost. Joseph and I are drifting apart and unlike last time there is no beautiful promises, shared feelings that will glue us back together. This time around no misunderstandings is tearing us apart. There's only death itself.

I want to go back in time. I want us to still be fighting about useless things. Anything to make me forget this down spiral I'm falling into. Since I'm not Marty McFly and I don't have a friend named Doc Brown to build me a time machine, I'm going to have to continue to rely on the leftover memories my brain is still hosting.

The infamous misunderstandings that almost deprived me of knowing the truest and most unconditional love happened during one of the most painful times for Joseph. I didn't know what happened but I was pissed. I simply knew he rejected me when I offered my help and it hurt more than I expected. My pride was wounded and my spirit was broken worse than before.

He was the one who had backed me up when I was taking my life in my own hands and he was telling me that I wasn't strong enough to take care of him. He might as well had told me that I was useless. I had returned right back to being a little girl who relied on others to raise her.

I wanted to give him back some of the strength he lent me but apparently I didn't have enough on my own to survive.

I sped back to the campus as fast as I could. I ran under my covers to hide myself from the fact that nothing I did will ever be enough for Joseph to see me as a strong woman like he saw his mother. I was never going to equal the strength of anyone in his family. That was why he couldn't see me as part of his family. They were eagles soaring above me, lions roaring their way through their obstacles while I coward behind his back, tricking myself into thinking that his vigor was mine.

I spent days in agony, nights drowning in my own tears and stupidity. I tried to pick myself up by taking more shifts at work and entering a cultural club.

Guess which cultural club I accidently signed up for?

The Haitian club! Like I needed more reminders of what I was missing.

There was to be a food event the following weekend. An entire night dedicated to the food Joseph was used to growing up in his mother's kitchen. I was going to ogle all night at the delicacies Joseph promised to make for me one day. How was I supposed to go through it?

I was missing him. I knew that but my mind and heart were incapable to cooperate and agree on whether to wait for him to come back or reach out to him while I could.

I sat in the same booth I served my first customers with my phone in my hands, his picture mesmerizing my mind, and my tear ducts leaking on my face. Orange and pink shades had just taken over the sky, sending the calming liquor of the night my way. My fingers hovered on the call button.