When I almost died.

It wasn’t too long ago that my husband tried to strangle me to death while I was sleeping. But it has been long enough that people in my life think I need to let it go and move on.

I don’t know how you move on from a reaction your body has. From something deep and primal. Autonomic nervous system firing off in the middle of the night. You can’t escape your own quickened heart beats. No matter how many people become disappointed in you, since you can’t reach your potential anymore.

I close my eyes, in the quiet hours. When my son is asleep. When the world is away. And I am away. I can feel him on my chest. He’s straddling me. He’s 6’7 and 250 pounds. His giant hands that used to cup and cradle me are wrapped around my throat. I can feel his thumbs pressing into me. I try to scream, but nothing comes out.

My legs squirm. My body squirms. I rip up his hands with my finger nails. He doesn’t budge. Why would he? He’s done construction and lived on a farm his whole life. His hands are rough hewn and masculine. Mine are small. Ineffective. Weak.

I can feel myself slipping away. I can only think to myself. No. No. This is not how I want to die. I don’t want to die filled with terror. Please. No.

My son is sleeping in a portable crib with blue trim, only at the foot of the bed.

I move my hands to his face and try clawing at him there. Finally I manage to scream. I scream. So loudly. And I can’t feel my legs anymore. They feel like tingly masses filled with air and sparkles.

The room is pitch black but I swear the edges of my eyes go darker. My head falls to the side. I don’t remember anything.
But my sister is coming down the stairs. She throws open the door. I can’t see her. I don’t have vision. The light is on. What’s happening here? She stammers.

My husband leaps off. He’s spry and athletic. He sits in the corner.

I can’t move. My throat hurts. I have spiral bruises all over my neck, down to my breasts. My eye is bleeding. I can breathe again. I can breathe.

I let out a moan. And I cry. I can’t stop crying. I can see the blue trim of the portable crib through my tears. My son is sleeping. Thank god. He’s asleep.

He’s sitting in the corner now. Looking down at his hands. His dark brown curly hair, it’s like boyish innocence. But it belies the demon he let loose. It’s a lie. It’s all a lie.

My hands, he says. My hands. Over and over. Repeating a torturous taunt. He’s a living recording. Flesh and blood and sounds caught in that moment forever. My hands. My hands.

It’s been two years. I can’t shake this depression. I can’t look people in the eyes. I grew up being abused. I’ve been raped. I’ve been homeless. I’ve been beaten. I’ve been abandoned.

But I went to university. I read books. I worked in microbiology laboratories. I studied systemic inequality and feminism. I convinced myself I was above it all. That I moved beyond fear.

Every day I wake up and I want to die. I don’t feel right. I don’t feel normal. I go see a counselor. I brush my son’s teeth. But I feel so tired. So tired. I am alone. Tired.

The rushing sadness, never ebbs. It only flows. A one way tide.

I struggle through each day. I white knuckle it. Sometimes when the cashier looks me in the eye at the grocery store, I have to cry in my car driving home.

I hoped to be something. To go to medical school. To be a family doctor. Those dreams. That person. I think she died that night.

Why do I have to experience terror? Why have I faced the monsters of the world? I am so sensitive and delicate.
I kept lady bugs in a plastic container when I was a little girl. I captured aphids on green leaves in the heat of the summer. I stuffed the container full of aphids for the ladybugs to eat. And I cried and cried when they finally died.
I have to be the strongest to survive. Strongest to survive for my son.

Strongest to survive for those people waiting for me to become their family doctor. They need someone to love them and care about them.

I’m delicate. I must find a way to resurrect that girl who died that night.

Today I don’t want to survive. Somehow I must. I must become living proof that monstrous things will try to destroy the sensitive, the delicate, the intricate souls of the world. But we live. We live on.

I live on.