Time is Precious

Broke Me

"Broke Me" Written by A. E. F.

Autobiographical Non-Fiction.

Copyright 2019. All Rights Reserved.

A tremor pulsed directly through my body towards my hands. They began to shake on their own accord.

An implosion tore through my bowels, barely giving me time to stumble into the nearby lavatory wherein I lost any breakfast I had meagerly managed to swallow past my spasming throat.

Tasting like turmoil and panic, I had barely gotten the honey-sweetened cereal past my lips earlier that morning.

It didn't matter. I'd gotten them down then only to lose them now.

Standing on unsteady feet, I paused to try and compose both myself and my clothes.

Gingerly stepping up to the sink, I turned on the cold faucet and tried to cool my wrists; perhaps that would help. Still breathing too rapidly, I closed the valve and turned to grab a paper towel from the vending slot.

I ghosted back to my office, a journey made physically but with a disengaged mind, eventually sitting on my swivel seat with an absent ascent.

Still trembling, I turned to face my monitor again.

The Windows logo stared back at me from the corner of the screen. It taunted me; whispered to me; "I have the information you wanted to learn. I gave it to you. It's all here in black and white. Read it again."

The words "chronic", "progressive" and "early life mortality" assaulted me.

I could not sit still...I had to move... I had to get away from them...I had to...I had to...

I had to lose complete control.

The floodgates opened. In big, heaving sobs my body erupted with all the pent up fear and pain I could no longer contain.

I had to get out of there.

A few weeks, days, later...I'm not sure how long it actually took...

...when the results returned negative I was only a shell.

I would heal.

Eventually.

But by then, however, I had already been hollowed out by just the possibility of a different outcome. I lost a part of my soul that day. I became weak, fragile.

That was years ago, now.

I still look back on that day with unease and a deep breath.

And then I try to forget.

And finally, I thank God every day that I still have in my life all that I hold dear.

For once, I hope no one reading this can relate.