Remember when you pulled off the side of the highway at two in the morning? It was 2012, and you looked up at the moon and asked if anyone could hear your prayers. The stars were covered by frozen clouds, and you were met with an eerie silence in the dead of winter. No one was listening. Nature is brutal that way, you thought. The tree tops around you were covered in snow, and everything around you felt like it was dying. It was freezing, but you didn’t feel cold in the t-shirt you were wearing, even though it felt like you too were dying. You got out of the car and couldn’t breathe. You put your hands over your eyes and blazed down the highway. You wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to go. You wanted to escape your own body and all of her stories. You wanted a safe place to land — a mother’s lap, God’s arms — anywhere but here. You wanted to scream, but even on the side of the highway, with no other cars, no other person in sight, nothing but you, the concrete, and the pine trees, even then, you couldn’t. You held everything in as you cursed God. Even the trees felt like they had abandoned you.
Nadia died the day before your birthday. Remember? ALS finally got her, and you were left with men who don’t know how to talk about feelings. You grieved by drinking a baby away, one you didn’t even know you were carrying. You dropped out of college and partied with strangers just to feel something. And then, that night, the night — you blocked it out the moment it happened. You don’t know this now, but you’re running — from grief, from your life, from that night.