Dying

Am I?

Sometimes it hits me and I stare into the distance and I can feel the sadness inside and out. I’m frozen at those moments. Frozen with memories assaulting me and an emotion of complete isolation, like a tree in a field of falling snow.

Other times I feel more alive and full of joy than I can ever remember. I’m letting myself be free.

The minutiae fills my life. The details frustrate things as if a few months from now might not be the last day. I still worry about my living arrangements, my furniture, new shoes, pedicure, what to have for breakfast. Although it often seems petty and stupid, life does not stop because I am dying.

Am I?

Life starts because I am dying. I look at things differently. Yet now not as much as I am sure I will. Right now I stop mid-sentence as if everyone else can hear the screeching halt in my head. Right now I correct my speech when I use the wrong words. Then I fade away to somewhere deep inside gray and warm. I pull back, but one day I think I’ll stay there for a while where it feels like I’ve stopped clinging on with my fingernails to something and I just fall and fall… But it’s fine.

I tell everyone that. It’s okay. It’s fine. Don’t worry. It’s true. Don’t worry for me. I don’t want you to. I want to be alone sometimes more than I can express. You can’t walk down this road with me. You are not dying.

Am I?

Don’t leave.