‹ Prequel: In the Month of May
One-Hundred Days
Day Thirty-Three: Fortitude
I walk into the bright lights and close my eyes, feeling my way across you to your hand. I can hear the shuffle of feet outside in the hall and the static of the TV grates the struggling silence that makes numerous attempts to blanket your sleeping form. I can feel the blood beneath your paper skin, and it's warm flow brings my eyes to open and see your calm sallow face blending in with the crisp paper white sheets. The sinkholes of your cheeks are black holes among the white slashed across every inch of this room. I sit down beside you and close my eyes again, afraid to take in anymore of your weakened form than I have to.
It's amazing, in my mind, how you can now be so weak and fragile, lying in this bed that only holds one although my heart yearns to somehow crawl into the negative space by your side. It's amazing, how I can now be the one leaning over your closed eyes, and how I can be the one mentally willing you to wake up to the sunlight and my relieved smile as you take in your first awake breath. You were always the strong one, always the one looking after me.
I can't handle looking after you now, not after all of this time.
You would tell me to be strong, and wipe away the tears with the pad of your thumb, smiling that bright smile and letting your eyes shine beneath the dimming light. I would always simply nod and rest my face in your palm, smiling with you as we laid beneath the setting sun. I would be able to take your hand in mine and lie beside you in the ever expanding space around us, as opposed to now, where all I can do is hold your hand in a limp grip, in fear of the cords and tubes threading themselves around and in your wrists. I lean over the bar on the side of your bed and close my eyes.
I had always lacked strength when it came to seeing the people I loved and looked up to inside of hospital beds. It's been something I have lacked since I was thirteen. I thought I was strong, those years before then, and then I realized that no matter how courageous and strong and big and bad you think you are, no matter how invincible and infinite you have it drilled into your mind you are, nothing can hurt a person more than seeing that one person they had always loved lying as still as death with eyes closed and chest barely rising and falling. Nothing can hurt more than having to take the strength when the person who always had it can no longer hold it in their hands. The strength to move on drills itself into the softest parts of your heart and slowly hardens them, and this transition hurts, it hurts more than anything a person could ever experience. It takes years, for most, and eventually, this strength, this fortitude, blocks the thoughts of the people you've lost and blocks the tears and they gather in a ball in your throat that makes it hard to speak and even harder to breathe.
You always had the strength, always had the courage and the power and the fortitude through whatever life had the nerve to throw at you. Your hands wrapped around turmoil's neck and strangled it until it moved no more, and you threw it away with the rest of its friends. You threw it away with chaos and depression and death and the abandonment by your mother and the drugs and the times where you were so low you could barely see. You threw these times and memories away and never cast them a second glance.
But now, you were looking harder than ever, and these memories managed to break into your skull and scatter its pieces across every piece of earth nearby. They rummage through your mind and find the veins that control your strength and courage and snip them into pieces that clutter your broken skull. These memories broke you into pieces, and they threw your courage into my frail hands.
I bite my lip and finally open my eyes to see you staring back up at me, smiling and with wide eyes full of questions and familiarity. You smile and scratch words out from your lips while I shake my head and try not to close my eyes.
You smile and gently place two words into my open palms, already almost filled with the space that your strength and fortitude take. You place two words into my heart and they sit alongside your traits, peacefully and supporting.
Move on.
It's amazing, in my mind, how you can now be so weak and fragile, lying in this bed that only holds one although my heart yearns to somehow crawl into the negative space by your side. It's amazing, how I can now be the one leaning over your closed eyes, and how I can be the one mentally willing you to wake up to the sunlight and my relieved smile as you take in your first awake breath. You were always the strong one, always the one looking after me.
I can't handle looking after you now, not after all of this time.
You would tell me to be strong, and wipe away the tears with the pad of your thumb, smiling that bright smile and letting your eyes shine beneath the dimming light. I would always simply nod and rest my face in your palm, smiling with you as we laid beneath the setting sun. I would be able to take your hand in mine and lie beside you in the ever expanding space around us, as opposed to now, where all I can do is hold your hand in a limp grip, in fear of the cords and tubes threading themselves around and in your wrists. I lean over the bar on the side of your bed and close my eyes.
I had always lacked strength when it came to seeing the people I loved and looked up to inside of hospital beds. It's been something I have lacked since I was thirteen. I thought I was strong, those years before then, and then I realized that no matter how courageous and strong and big and bad you think you are, no matter how invincible and infinite you have it drilled into your mind you are, nothing can hurt a person more than seeing that one person they had always loved lying as still as death with eyes closed and chest barely rising and falling. Nothing can hurt more than having to take the strength when the person who always had it can no longer hold it in their hands. The strength to move on drills itself into the softest parts of your heart and slowly hardens them, and this transition hurts, it hurts more than anything a person could ever experience. It takes years, for most, and eventually, this strength, this fortitude, blocks the thoughts of the people you've lost and blocks the tears and they gather in a ball in your throat that makes it hard to speak and even harder to breathe.
You always had the strength, always had the courage and the power and the fortitude through whatever life had the nerve to throw at you. Your hands wrapped around turmoil's neck and strangled it until it moved no more, and you threw it away with the rest of its friends. You threw it away with chaos and depression and death and the abandonment by your mother and the drugs and the times where you were so low you could barely see. You threw these times and memories away and never cast them a second glance.
But now, you were looking harder than ever, and these memories managed to break into your skull and scatter its pieces across every piece of earth nearby. They rummage through your mind and find the veins that control your strength and courage and snip them into pieces that clutter your broken skull. These memories broke you into pieces, and they threw your courage into my frail hands.
I bite my lip and finally open my eyes to see you staring back up at me, smiling and with wide eyes full of questions and familiarity. You smile and scratch words out from your lips while I shake my head and try not to close my eyes.
You smile and gently place two words into my open palms, already almost filled with the space that your strength and fortitude take. You place two words into my heart and they sit alongside your traits, peacefully and supporting.
Move on.