At Peace

My heart was pouring with unrelenting sorrow and I was choking on my own words. In that moment, I felt a crack work its way up to the crown of my heart and shuffle in different directions. I heard the cracking sounds as they worked their way around my heart. Numbness swept over me like a tidal wave and buried me in deafness; every word silenced within the walls of my ears. My pulse raced, eyes weary, I had to lie down before I broke in to tears like a little girl. There was no peace, time was irreversible and it had just begun. My legs were strong but would they hold... I tried to hold on but I was starting to realize that proving myself was the least of my worries. Tears welled up my eyes and the lurking pain was starting to creep in. I moaned in sorrow; the pain had finally reached me.The weakness inside me crept out of the hole it was buried in and possessed me like the liberating feeling I so much craved. I was out of it: out of my brassy exuberance and the feeling of loss and emptiness could not be defined. I felt helpless and there was not a damn thing I could do about it.

They say it's hard to know the extent of someone's pain until you've been there yourself. I was starting to get a taste of what that meant. There was a whisper in the noise, a loud whisper breaking though the chaos happening inside of me. If pain was the sun, I was the desert it was burning me to ashes and there were no white clouds to offer me shade. Another word, and her words will see me fall apart. In that moment, watching the clouds waltz through the ocean sky was like swimming on an Indian summer day. Nature always had my back even if she didn't. Time had been telling me the mystifying truth of change and how it welcomes everyone with forceful arms. I was breaking, maybe even dying of emotional loss and one more heartbeat and my heart would finally give in to the sting of her bad words; words that had so far been crushing me like bugs at the mercy of the human steps. I closed my eyes longing for rescue, I was desperate like sailors on a deserted island. 

For a while or so, I was lost, swallowed by the silent, sinister enemy inside who was, at the moment, making me wish I hadn't been born. I stood watching and hoping she'd walk back and embrace me as she unsaid every harsh word. But she didn't. She walked on without a word leaving me at the mercy of my own condition. I closed my eyes again, searching for some kind of peace, or resolve however brief. I buried myself in the sand, looking for something that could feel more painful than my heart breaking into bits. The din of the crowd and passers-by grew distant and the only sound I could hear was the ocean waves ebbing away at the shoreline. And then it happened...in that perfect finite moment, I let a lose, deep, satisfying sigh and there it was, calming every nerve and stilling the chaos. I was at peace. Peace beyond my mental grasps. Peace reminding me that a constellation of stars was in the not so distant bright future