Just Horrible

I have been putting this post off for days now as I hate to upset people. But then I remember that this blog is supposed to help me get things out of my system – so here it goes.

Maybe because I am on day four of being home alone with sick children – maybe because we are smack in the middle of winter – maybe just because – but there are awful images in my mind that just will not go away.

I could be washing my hands in the sink or walking up the stairs; just being in some random mundane moment that allows my mind to wander even for an instance and I see your face.

Let me be more specific and more horrific, as is the case with me.

I think about the day I walked into the house and found your note. I think about how I ran to the garage calling your cell phone, begging you to pick up. How I heard the motor running inside and started to throw myself into the metal door crying and screaming your name, while simultaneously speaking to the 911 operator trying not to sound like a lunatic. But I was utterly and completely insane.

I am so haunted by this day that I don’t think I will ever, ever forget it. Maybe the pain of losing you will someday subside – slowly ever so slowly. But that day and everything I experienced – it is so truly horribly X-rated that I feel like I am scarred for life. This is coming from someone who can’t watch commercials for scary movies. Yet I feel like I have lived the scariest and worst thing I could ever witness in a movie first hand, real life and all.

I find myself constantly thinking about how I threw myself against the garage door until some random strangers came and pried the door open. I saw you lying there and ran in without another thought and pulled you out onto the sidewalk – someone must have helped me, I don’t remember. Then I was lying on your body screaming your name, and though I have taken CPR and know all about First Aid – I did none of this. I just clawed at your shirt screaming don’t be dead over and over – then someone pushed me out of the way to start mouth to mouth - I didn’t know who. Not until he knocked on my door a week later to tell me how sorry he was that he failed you.

My beautiful amazing friend was there with me – moments after I pulled you out and I just remember her gripping me in her arms as she and I lay on the wet rainy sidewalk. She held me so hard it helped me focus on her and not the utter madness we were witnessing. She said lets pray and I know she said something meaningful but all I remember is whispering then screaming, “don’t be dead please g-d please don’t be dead” till I couldn’t see or talk anymore. I was crawling on the ground back and forth wanting to see what was happening to you and then just wanting to get so very far away. Then the ambulance came and the fire trucks and the police and all I remember are people standing around me as my friend and I lay on the wet ground sobbing and screaming and just praying that you would not be dead.

I don’t remember any more specifics – that moment blurs through my mind – just the crowd of people, the noise and lights and the ambulance workers taking you away. I really just recall my friend gripping me even tighter – keeping us both aware of the other so we didn’t have to be aware of anything else.

I am sorry that she was there with me to experience this terrible moment that haunts me and I know it haunts her too. She is just as sorry that I was there at all. This is the love of good friends – when you wish the other person didn’t have to experience the most awful of horrible moments.

I think about your face that day and just your body lying helpless on the ground and the images just don’t go away. Later that day I spent waiting in my kitchen for the police to come, to tell me what I already knew, that you didn’t make it. Sometime it feels like I was watching the entire event unfold from somewhere else. That it didn’t happen to me and though I saw it all, it didn’t happen to me. But these lasting, haunting memories that follow me where ever I go are a reminder that I did live through this, that it is real – every single moment happened and I can't stop thinking about that day - I just can't.

I don’t think any amount of therapy can erase what is burned into my mind. Sometimes I think maybe I want a vampire to glamour me or a magician to hypnotize me to make me forget what I lived through. Because I hate the things I see when I close my eyes and then when I open them – they are still there.

Maybe this is what the doctor meant when he said I might have post traumatic stress. Maybe I just need to get out of the freaking house, breath some fresh air and push forward like I do everyday and really hope that this all will just somehow go away.