Excuse me--it's required I do this somewhere before I hit the send button...

And the letter reads:



.....Then you wake up one day and the course of events in it change your whole life--

You close your eyes and your mind and try to pretend the circumstances aren't what they are--but there's this nagging 'knowing'....this 'you are not immortal.....there IS an end to this life you've called your own...'
It drops into your brain and sinks into your heart, tearing the breath from you as it echos in the crooks and the crannies inside your soul.

I felt it for days after the words were spoken--the presence of mortality, lurking, everpresent no matter the noise....

I laid in bed at night--the day chalked full of trying to do 'we now resume our regularly broadcast program' and 'acting as if' while my brain swam...knowing....KNOWING nothing was going to be forever, that there was an end to all of this....knowing time was short and I wasn't going to get to do some things I'd always taken as a 'given' that I'd get to do.
The day tasted different.
Things felt askew......nothing familiar and previously reliable FELT familiar or reliable anymore.

But everything turned upside down in the wee hours.
Left with sleeplessness the haze of reality infiltrated every cell, every breath.

What if I fell asleep and didn't awaken?
Would children find me.....who would care for them?
AndOhgawddd....what about those journals I'd held on to, packed away somewhere in the basement--the letters from long ago that would be discovered--

Wee hour plans for mass distruction of evidence of what once was a life.


Terror filled moments while I tried to play out how each person would handle not having me in their life. Orchestrations of how to care for them from the other side--what could I do NOW that would make it better for them after I was gone....easier, neater, cleaner.....

After I was gone....

Gone.
Final--
Deceased.
Dead.
No more.

What was dead?
Was there pain involved?
Who'd show up--who'd exit stage left when the dust settled and the deal was done.

Done.
Gone.
Final.
Left with nothing familiar.
Or nothing at all.
Just done?
As in you stop breathing and stop existing and you simply aren't any more?


The other day it dropped when you took that third nitro tablet --and it registered.
Three --and the pain goes away immediately....no more doubt about what you questioned with the first two.

And you opted to do nothing, said nothing....days passed and still--nothing .....and then you told on yourself....for a reason......
Told......

It's that awakening to the truth that you are not immortal......you will not live forever.
You'll leave this planet and there will be others left behind.
You don't want to hear it.
You don't want to think about it....

But ohgawddddd.....what about that box of stuff in the attic that you held on to--

You feel what you feel, what you're trying not to feel....
Numb with a foreign brand of fear you're just wrapping your head around the hard fact that time is short.
No one needs to tell you.

You know.......
It dropped from the head to the heart and sank until it tore the breath from you.......and it's echoing and bouncing off walls you didn't know where there.

There ARE walls.
You know that.
Maybe not until this very moment--but there are walls....





Now what?







And you can quit with the "you don't understand" any time now.....








Sometimes paths that get crossed for reasons are very uncomfortable paths.
That alters nothing, of course......

He's gonna hate me before he loves me.....


Yup. I paused.
I sat on it.

I've heard enough.
I can hit send now........

(for future reference, tyvm)