in the long run

you're finally dead.

for the past fifteen years, i've had the strange, certain knowledge that you would die young. that it would be sudden, violent. that it wouldn't be an accident. i would scour the news for traces of you, any sort of proof of life. i once saw you wandering down the street as i drove past-- you didn't notice me, but the sight of you burned behind my eyelids for years after that. a miracle in the flesh: a dead man walking.

sudden. violent. almost certainly not an accident. finally, you're in the news.

it took me a few moments to process. i had to reread your name twice before the concept sunk in and took root. somewhere in the back of my brain, i've always thought you were dead, even when i logically knew otherwise. so it was strange to have that align with the reality of your name in bold font, like a blurred image coming into sharp, cold focus.

i think i told one person about it before, maybe two at most. i confessed about all of it-- the watching, the waiting, the dark pit of inevitability somewhere beneath my ribs. i remember being asked if i was in love with you. if that was the reason for all of this.

of course, it is not. it never was. love is a slippery emotion for me as is, and god knows i could never hold it long enough for someone i only ever saw once in adulthood. but i did catch glimpses of you before then, and every time i did, i'd watch you until you disappeared-- always as quickly as you came, because you never lingered long-- and so my memories of you are just as fleeting: dark eyes, brows furrowed, fists clenched, scowl a red slash of anger across your face. i'd watch you, and that pit beneath my ribs would grow a little wider, sink a little deeper.

(not love. obviously not. later, with time and experience, i'd recognize the feeling as dread.)

for what it's worth, i'm sorry. i hoped i would be wrong. and, to be honest, i never actually thought i'd find out either way. i've just been holding my breath all this time, waiting for something terrible beyond words, unable to explain myself and unwilling to try.

keeping vigil. for fifteen years.

(not a pit.

you've been assigned to a staff nurse for the next three months of orientation, and to her credit, she is tenacious about it. no matter the workload, no matter your performance, she never hesitates to let you know that she resents you for the waste of her time-- loudly, in the middle of the nursing station, with all the other nurses scurrying past and darting sideways glances in your direction. their pity burns the back of your neck like a hot brand. you bite your tongue so hard you can taste blood, a thousand words welling up from the wound and swallowed back down, sour and metallic.

one evening, as the clock ticks closer and closer to the end of shift, you're biting your tongue in usual fashion, and she stops in the middle of her usual speech to look at you a little more closely. "you don't have to hide it, i can tell you're going to cry," she informs you. it's a stupid thing to say-- you haven't cried once, not in front of anyone-- only the tears are now streaming down your face and boiling onto your hands. you scrub furiously at your eyes once, twice, but more continue to flow. the only sounds you make are these ragged, stuttering gasps for breath, ugly and humiliating.

she's watching you through all of it. the expression on her face is one you're never seen on her before. it's the look people get when they pass by a particularly gory car accident. "you should have never become a nurse," she remarks casually. "not everyone is meant for this job. you should think about going back to school for something else."

---

you do that, sort of. in fairness, she did say you were shit at following directions.

---

it's impossible not to recognize the chief of psychiatry. he cuts a formidable figure, with the easy confidence of a man long accustomed to being the smartest person in any room. every morning, without fail, he makes his rounds across the hospital with a gaggle of harried administrators following ten deferential steps behind. so it doesn't take long for word to spread about his young new protégé, who's right at his heels everywhere he goes.

years later, your professor's voice is tinny but clear as it rings through the phone's speakers. "so how is she doing, in your opinion? how would you rate her progress?"

he leans back in his chair, fingers steepled, brow furrowed. "i like to think that i am an understanding mentor. but the truth of the matter is that i am very, very picky. i only train the best, so my students should be the best. anything less is a waste of my time. and i am not a man with time to waste."

jesus christ, that's an opener. alright. this office is on the first floor, and the window is right next to you. it's never too late to break the glass and make a run for it.

"with that said," he continues, "she is remarkable. psychiatry is an art. not everyone has the true ability to pull information out of a person, formulate it, and think ahead. plenty come into psychiatry without it, and they collapse. but in this, she excels. i have only had the pleasure of training one other student like her, many years ago, and he has gone on to accomplish incredible things. she will do the same." he cuts you a dry glance. "i believe she is more than prepared to begin practice. it seems she is the only one who feels otherwise."

there's a brief silence after the call ends, as you struggle to gather your thoughts. "thank you," you finally tell him, at a loss for anything else to say.

"no need to thank me. i do not give praise lightly. i would never say it if i did not mean it." he pauses, then grins at you suddenly. the expression transforms his face. "i noticed the new addition to the parking lot, by the way. nice choice. you worked hard, you've certainly earned it."

the tension building within you shatters, and you groan. "oh, god. seriously, how many fancy settings does a car need? i feel like it'll beep at me if i so much as breathe wrong."

my lover is not yet thirty, and everything about him is warm, familiar, assured. there are many constants in this life, and he is one of them. there are no surprises anymore. there is much potential for surprise: nearly six years have passed, and our road falls flat in shadow up ahead, the distance impossible to gauge. but there are no surprises. the road is flat, and i walk without watching my step.

my lover is somewhere near forty, and i wipe my boots off on the welcome mat before i step on their neck, gentle but firm. they gasp. the collar beneath my heel is a lovely thing, sleek and expensive from all the leather. it is attached to a leash, and the leash is attached to my hand, and my hand traces the collar as their face turns red, eyes bulging, mouth hanging open and desperate for air. i watch, and the wretched gears inside me creak and click into place.

“you’re sure you want to see it?” he sounds...surprised? uncertain? incredulous? whatever it is, it’s not the kind of tone you want to hear with a probe up your-- well. anyway. yikes.

“sure, why not? since we’re already here, and--” you wave vaguely at everything that’s going on below your abdomen, and he laughs, turns the probe a little. “oh, jesus. okay, yeah, show me.”

it’s...just an ultrasound. all of this fuss over something that’s just two centimeters long. you can’t help but stare at it in awe. “what are you thinking,” the doctor says, smiling with ease, the words carefully devoid of a question.

what are you thinking?

you think-- long after the pills, at 4 AM, curled up in a little ball, shivering with heat, sweating through your clothes and the bedsheets, gnawing on your hands so you won’t scream-- it’s a wonder that this had survived, and thank god that it won’t now.

-

seven months later, you think about it again. in a different world, you would have looked towards october with anticipation, excitement, nervousness, dread. it would have been an important time. it would have changed your life. but the day comes and goes, and nothing happens.

two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry you could not travel both. this was your choice. you feel relieved, happy, grateful. you don’t regret it. but in a different world, two roads diverged in a wood, and you--

-

a year later, you’ve nearly forgotten about it. it comes up in little ways, sure. your body is still adjusting to a new normal, and you regard the occasional nauseated mornings and aching evenings with a wry sense of amusement. but it hasn’t changed much, really. life is just like that-- constantly flowing from one dramatic decision to the next, potential futures spiraling off with every choice you make. it hasn’t changed much now. maybe it will later. but right now, it’s just a bunch of little paragraphs you’re typing away to put off a midterm assignment.

-

“okay, heads up, it’s going in now,” and-- christ, yup, just as cold as last time. he turns the probe a few times, tilts the monitor so you can watch the screen as well. after a few more minutes of chilly discomfort, he slips the probe out and drapes the paper gown back over you. “looks like everything worked out. you may experience steady blood loss over the next few months-- it’s normal, but just keep track of the flow. if the amount of blood doesn’t taper down over time, come back and we’ll do another check up.”

grad school is different from what i’d expected, at least so far. the classes aren’t easy, exactly, but they’re geared towards a different audience and quite flexible with students’ schedules. in a couple of months, i’ll have finished the first year. in two more years, i’m done. with this degree, anyway.

i like it, generally speaking. my classes this semester are admittedly a little less interesting-- i’m mainly writing this to put off an assignment due this weekend-- but that’s fine. i think i start rotations next spring, and it’ll be a challenge to balance the actual intense courses with shadowing, finding preceptors, et cetera. i hope i’m able to stay here for all of it-- i’ve grown fond of my unit and my shift at work, and i’d like to remain there for as long as possible until school is done. this is not a patient population i would ultimately like to work with, but it certainly makes for valuable experience. i am not who i was when i started here two years ago. that’s not a bad thing at all.

but i couldn’t really describe that change if i tried. i’m more mellow now, maybe? more confident in my work, for sure, though i’m still learning plenty every day. there are things i have done that i would have never considered when i was younger, good and bad and morally grey. but all in all, i’m generally where i wanted to be at this point in my life, and i can be flexible about everything else. 

it’s a little strange to think of how i haven’t written here since 2019. not for lack of awareness, nor for lack of content-- there is a lot i could have written about, but i just...didn’t. the pandemic took a major toll on everyone-- work was hell around this time last year-- and every time i vaguely considered writing something, the urge to do so was just...absent. according to my drafts, it looks like i started writing something six months ago and never got around to finishing it. there are a lot of older drafts around, too, but i can’t see myself posting them now.

part of why i used to write here was out of a need to express something-- emotions, thoughts, anything at all-- but now i just don’t feel that need. i paint occasionally-- finally managed to get that back, thank goodness. but i don’t quite have the time, and other things keep me busy, and life is not what it was when i was seventeen, twenty, twenty-three. a lot has changed, myself included.

and that’s not a bad thing at all. it isn’t. i don’t know if it’s necessarily a good thing, either. but does that matter? i am only what i had to become, and i am always going to be in the process of becoming someone else. the world keeps turning, and i move with it. that, at least, will never change.

my psychologist is retiring.

i’ve been with the same psychologist for the past seven years. i started seeing her once i moved out from binghamton and came back home. so from ages nineteen to twenty-six, give or take. and now she’s retiring in less than two months. she brought it up at the end of our session today, and i congratulated her immediately. what else could i say?

therapy holds an odd liminal space in my life. it always has. this is a person who is completely separate from everyone else i know—friends, family, work, school, any of it—and who still knows all of my history and thoughts and worries and fears, banal as those might sometimes feel. you don’t naturally get that sort of relationship outside of therapy, not usually. it’s strange, but it’s strong. and now i have to start that over again with someone else.

part of me is tempted to just...not. just keep going about my life without seeing a psychologist. i always knew this would end eventually-- but i’d assumed it would be on my terms, once i was ready to move out of here. it never occurred to me that she’d retire now. that it’d happen when i least expected it. and so part of me is tempted to go without because starting over is such an exhausting process. but i can’t skip therapy so long as i’m on medications. they go hand in hand. neither is optional.

i have to go to work soon. while i’m at work, i have to sometimes remind myself of the people and things waiting for me at home, because it’s very hard to be in this sort of environment and not feel mired and hopeless. but while i’m interacting with my patients, i try to be a blank slate-- no history, no future, no personal life or issues or desires. the less they know about me, the better. it helps provide a sense of stability for patients, and it helps keep me as safe as i can manage. so i can’t show anything that i’m feeling while i’m there, and that’s going to be tough, because right now i just want to bury myself in bed and not move for a while.

i think we are all faithful to certain things. ideas. we talk about faithfulness to others often-- like friendship, and relationships, and love-- but i mean separate concepts. i think i am faithful to beauty, and to silence. ideally a combination of the two. i like seeing the beauty in things, and i like it when the world reflects the same kind of quiet i find in myself at all times, a tranquil, unchanging pool of emptiness. a place where the breath falters, where the pulse slows.

i’d like to be more faithful to the present. i’d like to appreciate the now more often- the little opportunities that scatter and swirl around your feet on your journey to some higher goal. the detours, maybe. i’d like to be comfortable with seeing a beautiful thing and letting it fade, or die, and with no record beyond my own memory, inaccurate and flickering. nowadays, i like to look at things and never tell anyone what i’ve seen.

there is something inside me that aches. it always has. all my life. no amount of meds can put that flame out. as long as i live, i think it will live, too-- just change in shape as i age, maybe. as the things i fear change, too. i think that as long as i live, some part of me-- no matter how small-- will always want to die.

around this time exactly one year ago, i was raped.

i didn’t feel anything when i got home. emotionally, i mean-- physically, everything hurt like hell-- but emotionally, i felt nothing. i’d felt all of it in the car after i escaped. there were two phone calls. the call with my sister had the shock and clinical focus, just two medical professionals calmly running down a list of physical injuries, the options available, what needed to be done next. the call with my partner had the grief and agony, the screaming wordlessly into the phone, the clawing at my face with nails that weren’t long enough to do the job right. i wish no one could see me, i wish i were invisible, and my voice gave out before i could wish to die, too.

so there was that. but when i got home? nothing. the first few bruises started to appear, and i felt nothing. he sent multiple messages apologizing for being interrupted, and i felt nothing. i thought of how it would have ended if we hadn’t been interrupted, and i felt nothing, nothing, nothing.

---------

around this time exactly six months ago, i came home from my first day of work at my new job.

i never wanted to work in psych. i liked the clinical rotation enough, sure, but it wasn’t for me. i didn’t have the energy to handle patients like that day in and day out; i’d spent enough of my life trying to avoid the field as a patient myself. during the interview, they asked me why i wanted to work in psychiatry. i’ve always liked it, i told them, which was true enough. i’ve always felt it called to me, i told them, which was also true enough, but in the sort of way you hastily shove piles of dirty laundry in your closet just before an unexpected guest drops by. it’s there, yeah, but you'd rather pretend it’s not.

i got home, and i felt drained. a little proud, maybe, because this was the first Thing i had Done after six months of silently watching the clock tick by and wondering when and how i should kill myself. but mostly drained. those orientation forms took forever, and i needed a nap.

---------

around this time, today, as this is posted-- i’m at work. i’m not thinking about either of those dates, because my unit is one of the worst in the whole damn hospital, and i’ve probably got enough to focus on already. but when i get home, i’ll think about them, and i don’t know how i’ll feel.

maybe grateful, in a weird way. i got lucky with a lot of things. that i wasn’t working around the time it happened, that i could afford not to work for a few more months afterward, that i was able to get a job eventually. that i had a wonderful psychiatrist and psychologist who’d both known me for years. that i had friends and family and a partner who supported me as much as they could.

and maybe, maybe, a little bit proud. i’ve got a whole set of tabs open with searches for MSN and DNP programs. i have goals again. i need to be alive to accomplish them. i want to be dr. mccoy in my own way, in my own time. and i’m going to do it.

i don’t feel a sense of purpose anymore. i dreamed of the years ahead with hope and anticipation– advancing in my career, earning more degrees, a ring on my finger, a new place to call home. but it feels like all of that belongs to someone else now, someone stronger. i can’t call myself strong anymore.

i still don’t know if i can call myself strong. it doesn’t feel quite like strength. it’s just that i didn’t quit back then, so i don’t see the point in quitting now. and i want this very much, so i don’t see why i should settle for less. and that audacity, that hunger--

“i just don’t think we take enough time for ourselves, y’know?” she sighs, loosens her grip on the spray bottle so it’s angled downward in her hand. “we don’t acknowledge that things need time to grow. plants, projects, relationships, people-- we don’t put the time in to let them flourish, and then--”

“they die,” you finish, because of course you’d say some shit like that. 

she nods, perfect blonde curls bouncing around her face. “exactly,” she says, and proceeds to spritz roughly half of the bottle onto your hair. you watch yourself in the mirror, the carefully applied eyeliner and the dark circles under your eyes, the delicate bangles around bone-thin wrists, the way you’re sitting ramrod straight in the salon chair. you think of the bottom of the ocean, no particular reason why, just a flash of an image in your head, and you feel abruptly and ridiculously homesick.

“you have to find a stylist with an energy that matches yours.” she squints at your hair for a moment, then plops it onto the diffuser and turns the dryer on again. “i think of what i do as an art. do you have anything you care about like that?”

you consider this. “...well, art, i guess. i paint and draw. but i haven’t done that in a long while.”

she frowns. “why not? is it because you don’t have the time?”

there’s a moleskine sketchbook sitting in the bottom left drawer of your desk. it’s buried beneath a pile of letters and papers and other things you should probably throw out. you barely remember what’s in it. you do remember that it’s only halfway finished, despite the fact that you started it seven years ago.

seven years. there’s no way you haven’t had the time for seven fucking years.

“yeah,” you reply. “something like that.”

she cuts roughly three inches of your hair off. it looks more or less the same, just shorter, healthier. it looks beautiful. it’s still dead.

this blog turns nine years old today.

how wild is that? i remember making this like old snapshots in a photo album, yellowing at the edges. i had no way of knowing how important it’d become. it sits in my heart and waits for the moments when i can’t help but write. when i am helpless to do anything else.

the oldest draft here is a suicide note written seven years ago. it’s fairly short. just a quote, and nothing else. i don’t think i’ll post it for a long while, if ever. but i won’t delete it, either. and i’ve been considering a small tattoo on my inner left wrist, a tattoo right over an old scar, a replica of a wound. i’m not good with letting important things fade.

but i don’t make art anymore. there is a half-empty moleskine gathering dust in a cluttered desk drawer, and it’s been half-empty for years, and i don’t want to touch it. i feel guilty even thinking about it. and i’ve been struggling to write this entry for days, am still struggling with it. i understand myself so much more than i did when i first made this blog. but with that comes the realization that a lot of things are shifting within me now. and i don’t know how to express those changes-- or that fear-- into words.

when this day comes every year, i tell myself that i should write more. because i love writing, right? 

but i go to work wondering if this’ll be the night when someone successfully concusses or strangles or stabs me in the neck, and i spend my hours at work trying to provide care while avoiding those things, and then i go home and pass out. i carefully hide myself and what i’m like while i’m at work, because the less my patients know about me, the better. and so in the hours i spend awake and not working, i throw myself into self-reflection almost desperately-- remember who you are! remember what you’ve accomplished! remember what you love!

and i love writing, right? 

but i don’t know what to write. and hitting that block feels devastating now more than ever.

the person i was nine years ago would have never predicted that. when they started this blog, it was only a natural continuation of what they’d been doing before. they had no idea that it would last this long, exactly. but they had no reason to believe i’d struggle with it, either. i don’t want to lose that person. i’m barely holding on to the person i am now.

but-- 

whenever a patient tells me that they hope my friends and family die, or that i’ll get raped, or that i’ll lose a child-- i don’t react. in the privacy of my office, it’ll sometimes make me smile. because, well, you’re a little late. all of that’s happened already. i remember it vividly. and yet, here i sit.

i spent my birthday at work. i’m a psychiatric nurse in a state facility now, at the tail end of orientation, so i’m floating around between units and waiting to be formally assigned somewhere. i love my coworkers, but it can be exhausting work, and i’ve never liked being inexperienced at something. being new.

i told one coworker about my birthday in passing, and somehow the news spread to the rest, and they all planned a giant surprise party for me right there on the unit. i shit you not. personalized birthday cake and all. the nurses and TAs and doctors and patients all got together in one room and sang. i may or may not have teared up, just a little, and shoveled strawberry cake into my face to hide it.

the weekend before included dinner and karaoke with friends, a sleepy morning after in bed with brooklyn, and then an equally sleepy breakfast date in which he ate all my fruit and i got lipstick stains on his coffee mug. twenty-six is a strange thought. i started writing here when i was seventeen, after all. twenty-six seems so adult in comparison, which is pretty ridiculous for someone who’s writing this in old college sweatpants and owl socks.

i’m trying to figure out if i’m happy. i’m closer than i was before, i guess. work keeps me occupied, but eight-hour shifts mean that i still have a life once i’m off the hospital campus. i make sure to get lots of sleep and hang out with friends and see my partner every now and then. it feels good to be back on track, to have a plan in mind: stay here for a year, apply to schools in the winter, and hopefully start my master’s by 2020. i’ve saved up enough to go for my MSN, to move into my own place-- maybe to get a ring, too. we’ll see.

at the very least, i’m impatient. i want to walk into work feeling completely confident about what i’m doing. i want to look into programs and apartments knowing that it’s time to finally move on. i miss spring and summer desperately-- i’m grateful that this job means i get to see sunlight and get some proper rest, but it’d be nice not to need a heavy winter coat and scarf all the time. 

(montréal, québec.)

I. i tell my sister about the diagnosis. she’s splayed out on my new bed. the only sound is the soft whir of the ceiling fan. we don’t look at each other. “who made it?” she finally asks.

“psychiatrist. he’s worried about my current meds. says they’re great for depression, but they won’t do anything for PTSD. so i’m gonna wait it out.”

“do you think you can?”

i shrug. “i think i should. he says...it was a violent event, and no one’s gonna react to that well. it’s not a surprise. no drug is gonna help. nothing i take will make it stop.”

II. what do you believe in?

i can’t reconcile what happened with the concept of a benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient god. i know about the problem of evil, but that’s not enough. i can’t accept that there’s some hidden reason for this, some purpose, some good. no lesson was worth this. no ends justified the means.

this isn’t to say i believe in nothing. or no one. i won’t argue that god-- or a god-- or gods-- don’t exist. but if they do, they aren’t necessarily benevolent. so i don’t blame them. they have no obligation towards me. a human cares nothing for ants.

i think--

i think they are there. i think they are watching. i think they watched him, watched me, watched me stagger out of that house and fumble with my car keys, watched me drive blindly into the first parking lot i saw, watched me clean myself up in the diner bathroom and order breakfast at 8 PM. i think they are watching me write this, and i’m watching my words, and we’re all just sitting together in front of the mirror, watching the strands of hair at my temples slowly turn silvery-white.

i don’t blame them. that way, i won’t have to forgive them, either. 

III. montréal is cold, way colder than autumn right now in new york. it’s three in the morning. i’ve crept downstairs with a blanket, a hoodie, and a book. i curl up in a rocking chair, put all of these things in my lap, and stare at the wall in silence.

i didn’t sleep at all last night. i don’t intend to sleep tonight, either. i’m sharing a room with one of my cousins, and waking him up is a challenge, but even he couldn’t snore through one of my nightmares. so i sit here instead and wait for the sun to rise, and if i’m crying, no one’s there to see it.

we’re out to dinner, and my uncle turns to look at me from the other end of the table. “on a scale of one to ten, how strong is your faith in the lord jesus?” he asks, and the conversations stop. his daughter is sitting next to me. i watch as her hands tighten into fists under the table, her fingers blanching a furious white.

i never named it. why would i?

it had been a few days, and i was in target. i didn’t remember walking in, or why i’d stopped by in the first place. i didn’t know why i was standing in the baby toy aisle. there was a tiny plush owl, just a little bigger than my hand, and i stared at it for a while. held it in that hand. put it back and walked away.

later that night, i was on the phone with brooklyn, and i mentioned the owl casually. it really was casual. but there was quiet for a while, and then he said, “this isn’t healthy, amada,” and i laughed. it was sour, bitter. he sounded so cautious. what was the point? 

do you think i am trying to be healthy? do you think i care about healthy?

don’t give things meaning when they have none. don’t name things that don’t exist.

in rome, i drank too much wine and vodka and limoncello and ended up in an emergency room with nurses who only spoke italian, my sister furious with fear and snarling in italian right back, i’m a doctor, she’s a nurse, get her out of here. i got out of there. we came back to our little apartment and my sister screamed in the silence. you need to deal with this! you can’t keep pushing it away! you’re grieving! you’re hurt! fucking cry, for once!

i wept. i’d never wept like that before. it was like a massive stone wall crumbling under the force of a wave. in the hospital bed, i’d convulsed and gripped my sister’s shaking hand and begged her, i’m so sorry, i’m sorry it’s dead, i killed it, i didn’t mean to, my body killed it and i’m sorry, over and over, and i thought about that in the apartment and sobbed.

it’s not so bad now, i think. there’s a thunderstorm out, and i’m crying right now, but it’s just because i haven’t cried in a while. my body’s supposed to bleed in a few days, so it makes sense.

after the miscarriage, i didn’t trust my body. after the rape, i didn’t know that body. i couldn’t see it as mine. when he held me down, i couldn’t think beyond the terror and pain of what was happening. but now that it’s been a couple of months, i can think this: i don’t understand my body, which could snuff an almost-life out like a light but couldn’t fight him off.

(i’ve only just thought of that. it doesn’t really matter, and i’ll probably forget about it.)

it’s not so bad now, i think, because i’m not grieving over the miscarriage. the rape was worse, and i’m mostly trying to deal with that, so i don’t think i have room for grief. i’m glad i didn’t name whatever was inside me. i’m glad i didn’t buy that fucking owl. if i want kids in the future, i’ll have them when i’m ready and on my own terms. i wouldn’t have kept it, and i don’t regret that one bit.

little by little, we move forward.

i’d left my hospital a few months ago, mainly because it took two hours just to get there, and the long commute was taking its toll. spent three weeks in italy and greece with my sister, came home for a few days, and then went off to texas for another week. now that i’ve ostensibly finished traveling, i can focus on applying to jobs again. i'm glad i took some time off for myself, and the psychs both think i should take more after everything that’s happened. but i hate sitting idle. gives me too much time to think.

i still get flashbacks, but they’re not constant like before. if i shake my head a bit and concentrate, they fade like smoke. but they come back. they always come back.

i’m supposed to be taking each day one by one, trying to make myself face what happened head on. it’s hard sometimes. it’s only been two weeks. i’m not kind to myself about it. i struggle with calling it what it was-- i can say miscarriage now, that doesn’t stick in my throat anymore-- but that other word is tough. 

but the world keeps turning. my sister just graduated from medical school with an MD yesterday. my father retired last week. brooklyn’s started a new job and is considering taking the GMAT. spring is rolling along, and summer is just around the corner. so, little by little, i have to move forward.

the psychs say i’m forgetting myself-- what i am, what i’ve accomplished, what i can do, what i’ve planned for my future. maybe i am. i don’t feel a sense of purpose anymore. i dreamed of the years ahead with hope and anticipation-- advancing in my career, earning more degrees, a ring on my finger, a new place to call home. but it feels like all of that belongs to someone else now, someone stronger. i can’t call myself strong anymore.

nothing is stopping me from achieving my goals. and i’m not injured from what happened. the other facets of my life outside of this are untouched. no one knows about it. i should have the energy and motivation to move forward, but it’s just not there. and i can’t tell anyone why. besides, what could they say? what would it really change?

i keep getting flashbacks.

there are bruises all over. they ache to the touch. i have to go to planned parenthood for a disease workup and probably plan B, because he didn’t use any protection when he threw me onto the couch. at one point, i managed to get away just enough to reach my car keys. then he caught up to me and dragged me back.

it must have lasted at least an hour, hour and a half. i don’t know. it felt like forever.

brooklyn is taking it pretty rough. he’s trying not to show it, but it’s hard not to notice. he’s furious. i think he feels a little helpless, too. it’s easier for me to focus on him than to sort out how i feel.

because i feel raw. does that makes sense? i feel like someone has sliced me open and scooped out everything that was inside, and now i am just an empty husk of cracked ribs and skin, splayed out to rot in the sun. i feel like there is nothing left to take out of me.

miscarriage and rape within less than a month. talk about adding insult to injury, huh?

i don’t know. i don’t want to write. i don’t want to paint, or read, or go outside, or see people, or do anything. i’ve just slept as much as possible ever since it happened. i can’t fucking stand being awake.

the doctor furrows her brows, glances down at the paper again. “i can’t say for sure what happened,” she admits. “but that’s my best guess. it’s not uncommon, especially when it’s your first time. your body should slowly go back to normal. if things haven’t changed in a few weeks, come back and we’ll check again. how are you feeling?”

------

(it’s sunday evening, and it’s raining. the sky is a dull, watercolor grey. your father holds your mother close as they claw blindly at his chest, their sobs harsh and ragged. “breathe,” he tells them, soft, like coaxing a wild animal. “deep breaths. it’s gonna be okay. i promise it’ll be okay.” and then, even softer: “i’m so sorry, amada.”

your father cried last night over the phone, and his pain is a quiet thing. more than anything, he is worried for your mother. your mother believes you will die the next morning, and their pain is foreign and unbearable. this is why they are sobbing.

neither of your parents say anything for a long while after that. outside, the rain continues to pour.)

------

"it was probably caused by stress. you were just testing positive yesterday, after all. it could have happened this weekend itself. so when you guys are actually ready, make sure you do absolutely nothing to stress yourself out. your body’s clearly super sensitive to it-- at best, it’d be premature. at worst, it’d be a miscarriage.”

------

(your mother stays awake the whole night. their eyes are wide open, sightless in the dark. their hands are splayed across their abdomen, fingers spread apart. they know they can’t feel you moving, not just yet. but somewhere, deep down, there should be another heartbeat. your mother believes there still is.

but the morning comes, the sun rises, and you were already dead.)

------

“how are you feeling?”

how am i feeling?