I Know

If they only knew?

I know.  I have been with you for many years and it is easy to say that I know you just as well as you know yourself. 

I watched you as a small child reach out to love them.  I watched you as an older child dying to be loved.  I have watched you as an adult love your own child.  I know you and I see your love for those who love you back as well as those who never did love you.  This ability to love is amazing and it is something not everyone in this world possesses.

This love makes you good.  This love also makes you unlike him, or her for that matter.  You will never be like him because you are not sick.  Sick is doing what he did; sick is raising you in a nightmare like she did.  And while I know how bad you feel, you are quite healthy despite your pain. 

Despite your pain you have not quit.  Despite your pain you love.   Despite your pain you grow.  We haven't always known if we were going to make it.  Many times I have doubted our fate.  But today I can tell you that we ARE well and we are going to make it... because of you.  You are strong, you are loving, and you are not them and you never have been like them.

I know you and I know we are going to all right.

-James

Sick

Broken babies everywhere.  Fraught with shredded suffering, nothing soothes or makes them calm.  I am so afraid that I have a very sick mind. 

They scream.  They hurt.  My head throbs with psychic suffering and torment.  I am so very tired of having this twisted space of devastation within me.  Normal is relative but with simple confidence I can say that normal people do not have these images of pain.

Most memories are ones that I can endure but bleeding babies push me towards capacity.  Common people smile at me while daily acquaintances are kind and complimentary. 

If they only knew... 

If they only knew the poison that has washed over my mind.  If only they knew the images that I can never shake.  The oily suds of sin that froth and foam, they will never wash completely clean. 

I wrestle and I twist with these faces until I am overcome with the fear.  My bitter stomach churns as I reach for a familiar metal.  My hands shake with forward reaching regret until the warmth of release stings when mixed with salty tears.

My mind lurches forward as the flashbacks of the past find me unsuspecting.  The mental whiplash leaves me lost as the jarring shock brings me to my knees.  I am begging for an end; a present firmly rooted that is able to withstand the forces of his latent life. 

I am begging for relief before I am sick like him.

Money

This is a discussion I avoid at almost all costs.  Money.  Yet I am surrounded by it. 

Literally.  By way of my profession.

My family was wealthy.  So now that they are gone, I am left with a mess.  It's not a mess to most people but rather an inheritance.  I have now stood up the estate attorney four times.  I make the appointment and then I don't go.  His office assistant drives me crazy.  She probably is a pretty nice person and she probably wouldn't drive me crazy if I showed up for appointments. 

I get in my car.  I drive down the freeway.  I have even made it to his office.  And then I break out into a cold sweat, my head begins to spin, and my heart pounds with the anticipation of finality.  And then I leave.  I just can't do it.  I can't go in and legally acknowledge what has happened.

My family is gone.  A family that I never quite had in the first place.  So if I never had them, did I really loose them at all?  Perhaps my loss is bigger, even different than just their physical presence.  My loss was the chance for a caring mother; a loving father; a best friend for a sister.  I never had these things.  But I hoped for them.  I begged for them.  I even prayed for them.

Well meaning people offer me encouragement and ideas for what to do with these funds.  I nod my head and listen but each idea hits a dead spot in my brain and travels to a broken part of my heart.  Money doesn't make this better.  And while this would be a welcome addition for most; it is a painful insult to my own existence because I did not die.

I survived and they did not.  And for walking through hell I get the prize.  When I sign those papers I will make this official.  The black and white proof of their end and perhaps my own twisted beginning.  I want to say that this is good.

But all I feel is that money makes a dirty and really shitty band-aid.