Condolences.

 "If someone is offended by your desire to heal, it usually means they have more to gain from your destruction. "

October 29, 2023 - That was the day I died. 

Not many folks can tell you the actual day it happened. Usually, it's over time, a scattering of events that slowly break you down until one day you actively realize that you've been stone cold dead for years and you couldn't pin down an exact date if you tried but once in a magical rare while, the killing blow is sharp enough to strip you of your breath, force your blood to run cold, and you know beyond the shadow of any doubt that you now stand firmly within the domain of the recently deceased. The rest is really just idiot semantics...

For a long time, almost as long as I can remember,  my torturous slow rot was the other kind of broken, almost ambiguous in nature, the hyperbolic "dying" that any manic pixie scrawls on tear stained looseleaf, hours past midnight. 

It's like my soul was completely numb but maybe not so much like a complete full death as an intermittent coma where sometimes I guess I might even float close to the surface only to eventually feel that inevitable familiar undertow tug me down once again into the swirling aching darkness below. This final piercing affront, though, it's the one that freezes my thoughts ten times a day and forces an internal scream that, uttered aloud, would surely rival even the most horrific of Appalachian monsters..

Somehow, I've made it through the first anniversary of my untimely passing, and as yet,  my body has stubbornly failed to notice and react accordingly. It would appear that the venom is perhaps not as fast acting as I would have hoped.