4 Years Since a Birthday – Saturday May 10th

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There are codes that writers use to describe the way humans experience life.

“Her face crumpled”

“Her eyes filled with tears”

“Her heart ached”

These are short cuts and sure things.  It’s not laziness, it’s like spelling Lead Zepplin “Led Zepplin” so there wouldn’t be a bunch of assholes walking around saying Leed Zepplin.  Here though, I get the luxury of not caring if any of it makes sense.

Four years ago my son was born.  All of our lives flashed before his unopened eyes in five days.

Here’s what I mean to say: When I stop myself from doing something I want to do, I feel like I’m agreeing to have a rope tied tightly around my throat.  Any moment that I let my mind wander back to that thing, the rope gets tighter.  I can submit, and relax the muscles in my neck and trust that the rope will loosen with time.  Or I can panic and clutch and pull at it and bulge my eyes as it strangles me.

May 10th came, then May 15th, then all the other days.  The rope just became a part of my new life; sometimes just dangling there but most often rubbing the skin raw without choking me.

A lot of my memory is sensory based.  I remember the smell of a nurse’s hand lotion and the feel of cold steel under my finger tips and the sound of beeping machines and slaps of doors closing.  And the words.  I remember some words as clearly as I remember the smell of bleached hospital sheets.  I won’t write the words here now.

Here’s what I’m trying to say: My face crumpled, my eyes filled with tears, my heart ached…then I jumped the fuck off the bridge.  I keep landing without shattering, and the next day I know I have to get out of bed and jump again.  I’m not very different from anyone else it turns out, which I find comforting.  Every time someone tells me about a leap they took, I want to look into their eyes and see what made them do it.

Four years ago a tiny human took five days in May to change everything I ever thought I knew to be true.  His days changed every other day.  I always want it to be a happy birthday kind of day, but I don’t this year.  I don’t care if it’s a sad day, because the culmination of those five days and the following 1461 averaged out as pretty kick ass as far as I’m concerned.






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  1. Krystal says:

    I feel the way you feel – everyday I jump off a bridge and somehow I keep landing. I lost my boys not too long ago and while everyday is a struggle, I wouldn’t change the fact that they were here in the first place. Thank you for writing this and sharing this.

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