In the busyness of life, I nearly forgot my own.  I nearly forgot my past – who I was, where I was, what life was like while I was there. 

I nearly forgot the tears, the heartache, and the traumas. I nearly forgot that I was such a young girl dealing with such developed problems.  I was such a child, scared, and hiding, yet mandated to make mature decisions.

I was 14 the first time I witnessed someone lose his mind to the brink of insanity.

What a child.

I was so young, enduring too much beyond my own comprehension.

Even now, colleagues marvel at what I went through, and yet I expect myself to be normal – to act like a person unacquainted with loss and torment.

Torment. Absolute torment.  It was hell and I didn’t even know it, because hell had become normal.

Normal was hiding, wrapping clothes around me as a shelter to cry in peace.  So much hiding. So much crying.

And I never could have imagined how much worse it could get.  Oh, so much worse.

I can’t believe that was my normal. I can’t believe how much I hid from the world. Hide and hide and hide.

No wonder I have such difficulty grasping out of hiding.

I lived in Sheol. Abaddon was my home. I can’t believe I lived through it.

In some ways, I think I always knew someone would die.  Maybe I knew, somehow, that something else would destroy me.  Maybe.  Maybe I knew that I needed to be destroyed. Maybe it was always there in the back of my mind, hiding safely behind the clothes of denial.

I loved. That is the crime that caused me so much pain.  That’s the face I saw in the grave.  A man so wounded, he forced gravity to take the life out of him.  I was 21 years old when my brother stole his life from my arms, and I’m still trying to come to terms with that reality.