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“Am I finally waking up? Or am I briefly surfacing from the coma? The numbness that suffocates me. Opening my eyes once more to the realities of my life...my heart. I have been feeling things again, deeply, and it hurts. My heart hurts. It scares me, these feelings. Awake. Stirring. Eyes open again to the desires in my heart.
The need to love and be loved in return. To love passionately, with abandon, without fear, without shame. To offer the fullest of myself to another and receive the same love in return. To stand naked and exposed, vulnerable and know that I am safe, loved, to trust. I hate and love this desire.
My hands are shaking. I’ve been doing pretty much everything to ignore my heart, what I want, what I desire. But I am alone now and feel restless, needing to do something, anything, to distract me. Yet it doesn’t feel enough. Not this time. I don’t want to go back to sleep, to the coma, that empty numbness where I am safe, suffocated. I am afraid.
It was a story that pulled me up for air, stirred my heart to wakefulness. It was a story of sacrifice. It was a story of loss, it was a story of love.
It was simple but complex, so layered with depth and meaning.
They knew each other for years, serving together, through peacetime and through war. They saw destruction and death, they fought for hope, watching each other's back. It started as friendship you see. It slowly grew into something more. Neither admitting it, perhaps even realizing it.
They were distracted, to busy with the war. It took one of them to die to bring meaning to the feelings they had stuffed aside. Awakening them from the coma, to open their eyes. Maybe it is this parallel that so stirs my heart to wakefulness. They got a second chance, he came back you see, to life. Maybe that's me, reaching out from the suffocating dark, to the light, to feeling to...pain. It hurts, I hate it, I love it. I’ve been crying, or at least, trying to. Listening to their story, its been helping I think.
When he came back there were old wounds, things that had festered in the dark. Unfelt, unnoticed until they broke like a damn, burst forth, attacked without mercy, unrelenting.
They said things neither of them meant, they parted with regret.
They had their second chance and missed it. Sank back down to the dark, to the numbness. Better than the ever present ache, the pain of being alone. I thought that too, once, hell maybe more than once, over and over. I had my second chance as well. I’d found life again and it was hard, but I remember being satisfied? Content? I don’t know, but they just seemed like better days. I got hurt though. I sank into the darkness once more.
It’s been what feels like years, it’s amazing how each day can seem an entire lifetime, each week an eternity. So much time wasted. It’s taken this story to wake me up. I don’t want to sleep again, but it's hard, so hard to face with pain. To talk to someone about it. I want to fight this time, I need to fight.
It took more death to find each other again. They had their third chance before them and finally...they took it. Tentatively at first, both scared, both so tired of being alone in the vast empty dark. They didn’t know what would happen, so much history, both good and bad between them. They were willing to risk it.
The war loomed over their heads, took their time from them, made it short, precious. Neither one knowing if they had a future. They knew they could, and very likely would, die in this battle. They fought anyways, because it was right.
He should have died, very likely would have if no one had found his handgun, badly melted among the rubble. He was not far beyond that. He was lost in near death, that place of stillness that comes from seeing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing nothing and yet HE LIVED. Once his love learned of this, they rushed to his side, never leaving for long, wanting...no, needing to be the first face he saw when he awoke.
His love waited for months, through so many surgeries, procedures, life threatening infections, yet still they waited. When he finally opened his eyes, his love was there, holding his hand, kissing it. They had their time now, their whole life, stretching forward before them. It was no longer empty and alone. The future was theirs and they could figure it out together. A fourth chance, not alone. Awake, fully alive, facing their pain...together.
Is that why this story resonates so strongly with me? I am waking up, but I am alone. I am feeling the pain but have no one to lean on when it gets hard. I stare out into my future, vast, so fully of possibility, so unbearably empty. I don’t want to make this journey alone. I think writing this has helped, helped to understand and order my thoughts, why I am feeling this way.
It’s crazy how a simple story can evoke such a strong response in someone.
Words have so much power. I think I need to do this. I will write again.”
He sets the pen and journal down. Clasps his hands together to stop the shaking. Tilting his head back he blinks back the tears. Even now old habits are hard to break, automatically trying to suppress what he was feeling.
He stops, takes a deep breath, reminds himself he is awake, alive. He lets himself feel it.
The raw grief, the fear, the gnawing ache.
He puts his head in his hands and weeps. The floodgates open and he doesn’t stop. It hurts, it feels so good. He does this for what feels like hours.
Slowly the sun rises and filters through the shades of his empty apartment. He shudders, feeling the warmth as it gently caresses his shoulders. He looks up, his eyes are open.