How do you go back into life after that...?
How can you? When your body starts returning to normal, your fingers and toes start to slowly warm back up.
But you haven't recovered.
You're still in that moment less than 24 hours ago. You start remembering the people you almost never got to say I love you too. You start to remember all the people you love.
There's a fog over your brain and for the moment you're not here. You're no longer under the influence of those hazy thoughts. There's a single small beam of clarity.
That you're still alive.
You're still breathing.
And you're not mad about it. You're not happy, but you're not mad. And that is all you can ask of yourself.
But you are still alive. Sitting feet away from where you were. Pain shooting through you reminding you that you're lucid, you're still here.
You have a pamphlet with numbers and a promise to get better.
You have the smell of bleach to remind you it didn't look like that only hours ago. 18 mere hours ago.
8 of which were spent lazily trying to sleep, the pain stopping you from ever truly achieving it properly.
The nightmares making sure it didn't last long if you did.
You struggle with the argument of this is your fault. You deserve that pain, that guilt, hearing her cries, hearing her heart wrenching cries that knock some reason into you. You did this. It doesn't matter how desperate and distraught you were, you did this.
You hear the voices of people who you're sure hate you trying to stop the floor from getting any more red, staining themselves for your sake even though you did this.
You wake up after 18 hours have passed to an empty room filled with your guilt, filled with your stench, filled with the repercussions of what you have done.
So how do you go back? How do you look people in the eyes, how do you talk to them when all you feel is guilt and regret and anger? Do you cry? Guilt trip. Do you go silent? Guilt trip. Do you start talking like normal? Guilt trip from the start. Nothing feels right except trying again and letting them hate you. Nothing feels right except continuing to love where you're sure you'll be hated.
How do you go back to living?
