Thursday, July 15, 2010

Internal Monologue

I see you over there, in the corner, crying. You don’t think I can see you, you don’t think I register any of what’s happening around me anymore, but I do.
You’ve been here every day since I arrived. Some days you read to me, some days you bring company. Some days you just sit by me, reading to yourself or watching the television they’ve inexplicably left in here for me.
Sometimes you tell me I’ll soon recover, and that everything will be just like it was before.
Before…
It’s been close to six months since they wheeled me, silent and unmoving, hooked up to so many tubes and machines I barely looked human anymore, into this little white room, after the accident left me unable to take care of things like breathing or feeding myself without help. But you haven’t missed a day.
That’s what love is, I suppose.
It’s the willingness to sit next to someone you’ve been told will never speak or move again and tell them they will, and all the doctors on earth be damned. It’s the willingness to hope, even when told a situation’s hopeless. And you’ve been here hoping, and giving me hope.
But I can’t help notice that you spend less time reassuring me than once you did. And when you do, it sounds more desperate. As though you were really trying to reassure yourself. And failing.
I can’t blame you, you held on to hope longer than I had any right to expect you to, much longer than I did. But every time I have to watch you cry yourself hoarse, head in your hands, slumped over the edge of my bed, thinking nobody’s watching, it hurts worse than the accident ever did.
I never wanted it to be like this for you, you have to understand that. You’re still so young, so vibrant. You shouldn’t be here with me when you could be seeing all that this wild, wide, wonderful world has to show you.
If I could speak, I’d tell you to move on, to go out into the world, to stop wasting your time here with a dead man when you, at least you, could be out there living.
If I could move, I’d wrap my arms around you, comfort you as you wept, hold you until you had no more tears to cry.
But I can’t. And you don’t even know I’m still in here. More than a ghost but so much less than a man that the idea I was ever a person seems laughable. If I could still laugh.
But all I can do is lay here, in my bed, watching you cry, wishing there was something I could do, knowing there’s not.
All I can do now is lay here and think to myself all the things I desperately want to say to you. Like I love you, and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.

2 comments:

  1. Mmm. This just effectively broke my heart.

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  2. well, they can't all have punchlines :D

    ReplyDelete