Chapter Two: False Reality
Day Fifteen:
I am stronger now. My feet still feel heavy and I still tend to shuffle. But I am determined to get to the river, and so I walk…or rather, I pace, like a caged animal, from one end of our compound to the other. Elizabeth follows me like my shadow. Her kindness is beginning to chafe at me, like a too-tight sandal…I feel claustrophobic…like a child being snugly smothered by an overzealous aunt. But I do not wish to injure her…after all, she was Benjamin’s nursemaid.
The heat of the sun stops my pacing. I sit in the shade and consume dates and nuts, seemingly endlessly…my appetite has returned with a ferociousness that has surprized us all. Is it not strange that hope can be revived even in the midst of hopelessness? But why would I will myself to live when I have little to live for? I am startled by that thought. What do I mean “little to live for”? Is that what I have become…a wallowing pool of self-pity? How can grief remove all sense of perspective? It appears to be a bottomless pit of self-absorption…of introspection…but it is there that I find comfort…warmth…and it is there that I find the reason to claw my way back up to the light, fingernail by fingernail.
So I eat…so I pace…I must go down to the river again. That is one place outside of my dreams where I may see him once more. Who said memories cannot be felt? I know I will feel his presence there at the water’s edge. His youth, his vigour, his zest for life…
There I will learn to breathe again…
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