To Be Continued [Pt. 1]

It's taken me almost fifteen years to confront the moment when my entire world was turned upside down, when nothing made sense anymore, when the only person who truly understood me lie there in front of my ten year old eyes, lifeless.

That very next morning after her mommy's birthday, all ten years of her got in the shower and cried so hard. She washed away everything that made her who she was before she saw death in the flesh for the first time. She, too, became lifeless.  She was very smart for her age, but her little ten year old brain could barely comprehend life, let alone what had just happened. And the only person who could explain it to her in a way that she would understand was gone, which only made her cry more. Everything was blurry and dark and confusing so she just stopped moving...everything. She turned everything off and from that moment, life only happened TO her. Completely detached from reality, she just watched from outside of herself with ten year old eyes as her body merely went through the motions of the world. She was forced to don the hat of someone much older, but, barely alive, she never really grew up. That same little girl from that same morning in December of 1999 stood idle in that same shower for FOURTEEN YEARS waiting for life to make sense again.  In that shower, she let anger rule her because being mad was all she could cling to.

Then she got tired, so "strong" she became weak. Everything that happened around her began crashing down and falling apart, again. She fell to her knees because she couldn't hold everything on her own anymore, and the pain from the sudden smack into reality awakened her.

She realized life was happening whether she was mad or not. She accepted that she couldn't just stand there waiting for everything to magically make sense again; she had to DO something. She had to move. She had to go find herself and catch up on everything she'd missed. She had to make the choice to allow herself to feel all of her feelings, past and present. My ten year old self had to be brave enough to face the, now 24 year old, body she'd purposely neglected. Only brought together again could I begin to heal and get to where I am now: writing about how it took almost fifteen years to get here, to be able talk about it.

To be continued...