The first time, the very first time, there was no way for me to know that it was the last. You never know that things are ending until they do. Even when you find yourself trapped in the painful cage of waiting, you can guess, but you can’t know.
The not knowing was what gave me restless nights without restorative sleep. The uncertainty made me useless and stole my ability to focus on anything. The not knowing sat on my chest and made it hard to grab my next breath, it drew my chin away from what I was attempting to focus on with cold stiff fingers, pulling my gaze into the distant unforeseen future that hangs above people’s shoulders when they try to engage me.
“I’m worried about you…” they might say, these people who love me. But try as I might to see them, hear their words, the anxious unknown would pull my gaze into the ether. Seeing without sight.
These people loved me, but they could not give me peace. Because they could not answer the one question I clung to, “Now that she is dead, how much longer till the sickness takes me too?”
Soul Vomit 