Beautiful Mind

I never thought it would happen.

I had seen it in movies, read about it in books but you never really can imagine the pang of disbelief. The indescribable sensation in your gut that refuses to let you admit to yourself that

Someone you love, died.

They are dead.

They have been slaughtered, killed.

The memories scream at me, coming back in fragments. The first time I experienced the flashbacks was two weeks after the murder.

I was walking home from the hospital, after a check-up and I passed by the restaurant we used to go to. That was when the cries of pain rung out. Rattling my rib cage as the agonizing voices sung of the piercing bullets entering the chests of my parents. I doubled over, my body shaking with soul wrenching sobs.

The doctors lunged at me asking questions to loosen the horrid hands of rotten memories grasping my mind. How do you kill the monster that grows inside of you and clings to the people you don't want to remember as victims of it?

I want to remember them as family, not fractured parts of my life being eaten alive by a trauma.

Is that too much to ask for?