This week's word: Stitches
EDITOR'S NOTES:
To be completely honest, I've been a bad writer and I've not participated in a single one of the words of the week. I fixed that this week, but I did it under some pretty bad circumstances. Writing this [it's 327 words] was kinda...I dunno. I just felt for my own sanity that it needed to be said. I think some people might find this intensely personal, but I sort of think that the more I share this, the less burden on my heart there is.
Also, since I tend to write waaaaay more than 500 words at a sitting, I gave myself an extra challenge - I wrote all of this during the song All of My Life / Phil Collins. At least that way, I knew I wouldn't go over the word count. *chuckle* Anyway, without me yammering on, this is my entry.
I lay there on the couch, completely motionless, the beer can set carefully down. I didn't know what to do, nor what to say, nor how to feel. I couldn't explain the numbing sadness I felt inside, nor how exactly to express that sadness.
It was Friday morning, 1107A. Only because I took a bit of what little energy I had to look at the clock.
It was more than a week before, 168 hours, that we had gotten the news. We were still pretty numb, I guess people handle things in their own ways. And yet 168 hours later, here I was on the couch unmoving, paralyzed by sadness.
Maybe not so much sadness, but all sorts of emotions. Anger at what a stupid, senseless loss it was. Anger that someone's son won't truly get to know his father, that he'll only hear about it through what other people tell him. Anger that my little girl would ask for someone she loved, and we'd have to find ways to let her know that he won't be coming back to this world.
It's at that thought that the tears start, that I close my eyes and sob, that my pain rocks me so hard that my lungs feel as if they're caving in on themselves and I get stitches in my sides from curling up on the couch and doing this. I lay there for a good half an hour before the sobs die down, the physical pain recedes, and I feel like nothing but an empty shell that's hollowed out underneath the bright and happy glow of the day that's still in front of me. So much around me to still do, and there I was, curled up under the weight of my misery where somewhere, someone was free from all of it.