The Great What-If
Sometimes I wake up early, before the dim winter dawn, and sink deeper under my heated blanket, listen to the clicks of the furnace switching on, and try to shake off the wild twists and turns my mind likes to take when I’m asleep. Dreams that feel like memories, like hallucinations, like an alternate reality where I’m always running, always escaping, scrambling for money and love and my voice to be heard.
I’m safe here now in my little house under the clouds of West Michigan—as safe as anyone can be, I suppose. There is no corner of my home now that I am afraid to go, no door that I tiptoe past. All this I have helped create, this haven where I can breathe easier, and still my lungs catch in the in-between of sleep and awake.
David turns to me in the bed, awake now too, and says, “Remember how hard it used to be?”
I nod. “And I’m still tired from it all.”
The nonstop work and classes and car problems and church problems and pushing down the trauma and anxiety because I had no time to deal with it. I’m still learning to rest after needing to survive.
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