A Candle in the Dark

Being trapped in your own mind while your body tries to fight to stay alive and hold on to strength is the most excruciating experience to have....

I watch as she tries to fight against what's attacking her body, mind, and soul. I broke down like a child for the first time and only 1 person could provide comfort.

I look at how helpless and frightened she is. On the inside, she's screaming..."I'm here if you would just understand!" As I look into her eyes they are concerned, they stare straight through me as they speak to me.

As I sit here I don't know what to say to her most of the time, I want to switch places with her so bad, she doesn't deserve this, and she shouldn't have to fight with her body all the time.

I have watched and helped her conquer one disease after the next but this one has its gnarly hands wrapped her neck draining the spirit she has left.

Everyone around her treats her like such a delicate flower and for that I am grateful. She is my fragile white rose that I will always want to blossom from the concrete. I love her deeply, I adore her very being but I think of the bad as well and it hovers over me like a cloud.

Everyone stares at us knowing every single detail, all the trauma, and the pain....so strange and intimate for everyone to know. And yet I have to hear my faults and my struggles from others while she unable to utter a word stares into my eyes like it's everything she has been wanting to say.

The dance of life and death is such a morbid performance and yet here we are waltzing across the dance floor. I have never been one for theatrics and it shows.

It hurts to hear her last thoughts, her fears, her frustrations, and her misery before this hideous tragedy. Words and thoughts no child should bear to hear. Words and thoughts leave you staring off into the distance while a lone tear falls.

I never want to have kids, or a family of my own because of those thoughts, those words. I may never be good enough but for now, I can be enough for what's left of my family. I can be enough for them to talk to, I can be enough for someone to cry to, bear the weight of the world if it comes to that.

I can't seem to shake the feeling that everyone knows the bad, ugly, and chaos that goes on behind these off-white walls. I have always been told to mind my own and let no one in that doesn't need to know.

Complete strangers believe themselves to have authority over us but no more. I have grown into adulthood, responsibility, and looking after children that are not my own. When they look at me I want them to hold strong, cry, yell, and let it out instead of letting it become a burden too heavy to carry.

I have carried my burdens and hers, I have confided in her and it turned its ugly head, I put my trust in her, I let my guard down, and now that we are here I can never leave her, I can no longer give the words and thoughts its power. I have to help her heal and go away. At least that is what will give us solice...