I'll Be Waiting In The Fog

“Edge bits of my life recede into the fog sometimes as life’s details get busy. 

I just picked up a little photo book off the table by the couch to use as something hard to put under paper as I wrote (actually ballot as I voted. That prior is all just setting the scene). 

Anyhow, turn photo book over and shit, there is CJ staring at me and I remember that he is gone. Part of me is screaming S H I T.  And I am there again, not believing that actually happened. Not believing in a reality at all. This happens in a split second. Next moment my eyes pinch, I am sad. 

And then mundane happens. I need to pee. I have to do things on the “to-do” list before a certain hour. Edges of my life move back into the fog as I deal with right here, right now. 

I wonder, how many times, how many days, how many moments does this thing happen to my sweet niece?”

Gripping the handle of the kitchen drawer, I slowly drop to the floor.  The cold tile is hard under my knees, but I don’t move. Grief has caught me in its quick sand and continues to pull me down, down, down.  I brace myself by that drawer handle, and it gives the tiniest bit under the weight of my pull. My forehead rests against the cabinet below and I cry. The flood gates have opened and my sobs come gushing out, making it hard to catch my breath. I feel like I am suffocating. I feel like I am drowning. I feel like my heart is shattering inside of my chest, and all I can manage to do is make myself smaller, and smaller, sinking closer to that dirty kitchen floor.  Because as I walked by the refrigerator, I saw the photos; I saw his handwriting on the last letter he wrote to me just days before it happened; I remember he is gone… And I remember how much it still hurts peering through the fog. 

It’s hard to put into words the way I feel inside. Even being in a room surrounded by people, I feel alone. Everything races by me in lightening speed. Yet I remain still.  I laugh with them, sing and drink with them, go through the motions I know from muscle memory, but inside I am still. Waiting for someone to notice.  Because my head is on a swivel with invisible hands reaching towards me from every direction. They take turns spinning me until everything else turns to a blur. They are always with me, these invisible hands. They have their fingers on the trigger and they aren’t afraid to pull anytime I start to forget what has happened and the person I have become. They pull that trigger and the fog disappears.  

I look at my phone and the background photo of his face covered in flowers, frozen in time, illuminates bright and I squint. Trigger. I use my thumb to swipe up on the glass screen and turn the brightness down as low as it will go. It’s the early morning hours and the way I start my day. Every day. Trigger. 

I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, eyes puffy from lack of sleep. The insomnia and night terrors haven’t fully gone away. Trigger. I’ll float like a ghost and coast through the day, my tired soul adjusting to the lack of rest. Life feels like a test. Trigger.

In the kitchen I pause at the fridge. I stare at the photo strips that cover its surface. More moments captured and frozen in small frames on wilted photo paper. His smile, even when I close my eyes and squeeze tight, I can still see it. I can feel myself next to him in every one of those photo booths around town, living on the edge and laughing. I hear his laughter in my head and feel his shoulder pressed against mine as we pose for the next flash. Trigger.

These moments, when the fog seems to lift, the air is stolen from my lungs. These moments cripple me with pain. They hold me, still and rigid, as those grotesque hands take turns ripping and pulling at me, spinning my head, shouting in my ears, pounding on the walls around me. They scream defening sounds that radiate through my body.  In these moments I can’t move. When the fog lifts, I shut down and fold into myself. So captured that I can't even speak. Trigger. 

These moments when the fog has lifted, I am reminded about everything I don’t want to be reminded of.  These moments when the fog has lifted, I am an open target, exposed and vulnerable, waiting in full anticipation of the next photo, smell, sound, song, book, movie, image, memory, person, place...color, to pull the trigger.