Learning to Breathe

I am finally learning to breathe again. I no longer feel the palpitations of my heart when an ambulance passes by. no longer hear the screech of the sirens in my dreams. I have lost the smell of Clorox and antiseptics in my nostrils and I can drive past the hospital without an anxiety attack. When people leave my presence it no longer means they will return in an altered state. But it has taken twelve years to get to this point, twelve years to begin to put back together the pieces of my life that were scattered to the four winds in March of 2000. It was our own Y2K, our own nightmare of an unimagined proportion. We lived through it a day at a time until pacing the waiting areas of trauma centers seemed normal. It turned us inside out, divided our lives neatly into Befores and Afters.

For twelve years, I have been holding my breath. I am daring to breathe again.