For David

This piece gets me. It is the ice at the bottom of the whiskey sour, what remains after everything else I've written on Prose.

It is the first entry, the first piece I ever wrote on here.

The below is actually the edited version, which I submitted to another challenge many months ago. This is its third time seeing the sun.

On a hot, lonely day in April three years ago, this is what I had to give.

I hope it glows in your eyes. It glows in mine.

xx

David has round eyes. And right now, they are full of sadness and deep concern.

“This makes me realize,” he says, “that it’s in the cards.”

David is legitimately crying. Tears are seeping into the top of his buttoned up collared shirt. By day, he works at the largest insurance firm in the greater Boston area. A job he loves. But he has admitted that when he leaves his office, he blasts jazz in his car to prevent panic attacks and crying jags.

I stare at the floor. It’s like watching a stranger cry on the bus. I wonder what happened.

David says, “It makes me realize that Abby, one of us, could not show up here one day. It would be over.”

The group leader finally turns to me. Abby, how does that make you feel?

I don’t know, what would it be like to feel anything right now?

I hate this question.

David, in some twisted way, is getting to the Heart of Group Therapy. Suicide is always lurking in the back of our mentally ill minds. For some reason, I always think of my insurance company here, checking the box of: Ok, Abby is suicidal, coverage is approved.

But is this more than money? I think back to the aftermath in the ER, after the Ativan. I apologized. To everyone. My body on the hospital bed. Taking someone’s place.

We don’t pump stomachs anymore. Too much damage. We wait it out.

No matter what?

My war is against my very being, my soul. As I watch David cry, I retreat to a familiar place.

My body is sitting and staring, not looking or fighting.