Salvation

Quiet solitude, like a scalpel, cuts into my heart, letting emotions long tamed spew forth, bringing a bloody burning sadness to the day. Lonely solitude, like a raging sea around a deserted isle, washes away the levy locked around my soul, flooding my mind with swirling thoughts and memories. I cannot drag myself to the surface of this funk, my life preserver is miles away, and I feel myself sinking swiftly in this current of sorrow. If you have never lost a child so dear you can never understand that you cannot ever heal from having your heart ripped up and torn to pieces, that the best you can hope for is to get up each morning and trudge on, seeking normalcy in routine, no matter how insignificant or frustrating it may be. And when that normalcy is disrupted, you hang by a thread from the very edge of hope, wondering if you have the strength to save yourself once again, to pull yourself to safety, or if you could just let it all go and float down to the depths of the very hell from which you have been running, to surrender to the dreams that haunt your nights. I want to scream out to the world that I am not okay, I will never be okay, but instead, every day I get up and join the masquerade, hiding raw emotion behind a mask of indifference. And instead of screaming, I write. It is my salvation. Early in the morning before the sun is up or late at night when the house is quiet I seek solace in writing, unseen and unspoken words pouring out onto the pages, escaping like sweat from my pores, bringing cooling relief from the seering pain of motherhood unfinished. And slowly my mood shifts and the words lift me and give me strength to face the world again, to get on with it all, to be a part of the living.