The pain had lurched into my stomach.

The pain that was an emotional stir suddenly clashed into my physical sense. My body became a wet damp sheet, and my stomach forced my body to rush to a place where I could expel everything. All of the memories, all of the words, and all of the actions.

My body so desperately wanted to release everything that I had experienced in the last 18 years. Everything that I felt, and everything I knew. After my body had expelled the physical sense of those memories I still was in a shock. I couldn’t control the shaking and air couldn’t come fast enough into my lungs. It was like breathing through a straw.

The tears could not heal this. Running seemed the only logical plan.
And so I did.

I displaced myself. I became a shell, a shell of the emptiness and darkness that had surrounded me. The tears no longer came and the pain became a numb reminder that I was in complete desperation.

Sitting in that room. It was the reality that I had wanted to be an illusion. Every time that I sat in that room I wanted to run. Every time that I heard that voice I wanted to find an escape. So I created a wall. A wall that was higher and thicker than any other man made object.

After I created that wall I entered that room and was hidden behind my wall.
Every time he grabbed my neck, I wasn’t there.
Every time he poked me, I wasn’t there.
Every time he cornered me, I wasn’t there.

I perfected this life of hiding. I learned how to control my relationships and how to leave my emotions at the door step.

After learning how to hide I actually left. I moved away. I moved to Chicago. Being on the west coast had taught me to love the softness of the ocean and the beauty of the sun. Now the skyscrapers took the sun away. Everything that I knew, had become a distant fantasy of things yet to come. The faces of city goers in Millennium Park had softened the city that I had decided to find my place in.

But the reality of this place was something that could not allude me. I knew how to hide, and I continued to hide until I was only a body. A body that wandered around the busy streets of this windy city and was lost in it’s depth and structure.

I got a job at a small business answering phones. This riveting job introduced new characters into my realm.

There was Steve, the sandwich guy. Now I still don’t know exactly what Steve did for the business that I worked for but I did know this. When I walked into the door in the morning and when I left at 5 Steve always seemed to have a sandwich. I never knew if it was the same sandwich all day or if he ate multiple sandwiches during the nine hour work day. I also wondered if that was all he ate.

Then there was Mary, who was a nice girl but had the tendency to always be chewing gum. She also came to work consistently 15 minutes late and had a small tick that effected her only when she was nervous or excited. I still remember when we made her sing happy birthday to herself in front of everyone in the office. Her eye twitched in such away that I thought it actually lived and breathed on it’s own.

Joe was the funny jerk in the office. I think that everyone knows someone like Joe. He is funny as long as he is not making fun of you.

And then there was my boss, Victoria. Her closest friends called her Tory, a name I never uttered from my lips. Victoria was a narcissist. I don’t feel like there is any more to say about her.

There were a plethora of other co-workers but none of much importance. These were the three people that I worked with on a daily basis. These were the people that thought they knew something about me.

Unfortunately they never had the chance.

It’s not that they never knew me. I was truthful in some of what I told them but if they were to look at the big picture now they would have been baffled.

All they knew was that I was a sweet girl whose life was gone to fast. Who left to soon. Lucky for them, they still have a chance. I never did.

I will never forget how it happened.

I was just sitting there, and he came in. I thought I had gotten away, but he found me. In one moment it was all over. My facade was ripped away in an instant.

"If I can’t have you know one can," he screeched, just to get his point across. Then he pulled out a gun and I was gone. It wasn’t really painful, and my life didn’t flash before my eyes.
It just happened. The idea that death had occupied now became the reality of my identity. And in an instant he was gone. How I wished he had lived. How I wish he had lived out his days in the miserable state in where he sent me.

But he’s here with me. And we are in that same room. However, he is no longer in control and I am no longer the victim.

There is something different here. Something unknown. Something hidden. I guess I never had a picture of what the ‘afterlife’ would be like. I would never had expected it to look like this.
It was the same room that we had both lived in for the entirety of our relationship. This room had the memories of our broken marriage, and our broken souls. The blood stain was still on the wall.

That night was the night that I decided to run, and yet I am still in the same place. I ran away from the memories and from the darkness and yet I still am wrapped in them.
Is this Hell? Or just a state of being?

He is wondering around the room like he never left. Like he never came and found me and ended both of us. Eventually he just ends up flopping on the bed. The sheets raveled around him like he was still physically existent.

I wanted to scream. To scream at him and tell him that he ended it for both of us. To throw my pain at him. If I could only open my mouth and let my angry petitions out. Then I would feel the healing of this emptiness in my soul. I went over but I felt a black tar cover my mouth. I could no longer speak my thoughts. I stood over him in a way that felt like forever, and tried to get to him, but nothing came of it. So I sat down in our old rocking chair.

And the memories that I had thrown up had re-entered into my mind. The memory of holding my child in this rocking chair. That warm small body that was an interrupting event in my life. I had never loved someone the way I loved that body.

I remember giving that body away.

Secretly, before I ran.