[ WP ] Your ascent into sanity

I can barely remember anything after it happened, let alone before it. 
 
 Noise. Lots of noise. 
 
 Screaming. 
 
 My devastation. 
 
 Arms around me, a shushing, a sweet voice. Maybe that of my friend. 
 
 My sons, my daughters, my wife- all dead. 
 
 I can not very much recall the rest, as it all goes by in a blur within my forever damaged mind. I lived a normal life, I assume, grieving like any father and widower would. The rest I learned from my journals- that my family was slaughtered by some masked serial killer, that my dear friend had begun to come to my home daily to comfort me and to ensure that I was alright. 
 
 I, however, vividly remember the moment I slipped. I was in a restaurant with her- my friend- when I suddenly saw that masked killer, responsible for tearing nearly everything I loved from me. In that moment, I lost it all, and my mind fragmented, never to be fully repaired. 
 
 Still, bits and pieces of memory come back to me- particularly her voice, trying to coax me from my incessant sobbing. I knew not what I was weeping for, merely that I had an all-consuming sense of loss and devastation. 
 
 However, with my friend's care, I got better. I moved on, remembering more and more, acting normal again. Feeling *happy* again! Oh, how I can remember falling in love with that wonderful friend, as she cared for me so dearly and brought me out of the abyss. In fact, she fell for me too. 
 
 Now I am glad, married again with a darling son and daughter, and though I will never be the same person I was before the traumatizing event, I am jovial merely to live the life I live with my dearly beloved family. 
 
 Whenever I see a picture of what I had before, though- my sons and daughters and previous wife- I still grieve, as I forget them. Every picture and memory of them is as if looking at a stranger's family, a stranger's life. Each letter I wrote them, each video taken, every single remembrance- relics of a life another man lived within my body. 
 
 They died twice- within the world and within my memory. 
 
 And for those deaths, I still grieve.
