Shaking Hands

The first sign is in my hands, their shaking is the warning before it all starts, then the trembling explodes into every part of me. It feels like an earthquake in my soul. I can feel all my cities breaking and collapsing in my chest. Then, I lose control. You know how when an impact is so severe, one tends to lose consciousness? I guess this is kind of like that. The impact of the disaster going on inside me takes away my sense of being, leaving my body flailing for some control. My thoughts race faster than the speed of light, which leaves a blackhole in my mind. Nothingness. Blackness. I’m so cold, but I can’t feel anything. I hope death isn’t as blank.

Once I begin to hear a voice, I cling to that voice like a rope that is going to pull me out of this infinite emptiness. That voice then becomes my lifeline, and I get terrified when I don’t hear it anymore. I’m floating somewhere between nothing and everything, and I am trying to pull myself out but have nothing to grab onto until I hear that voice again or another voice that will bring me home. I climb until my body begins to vibrate.

It’s the best and most terrible feeling when my body regains control. I finally know that I’m alive, but I am welcomed back to Earth with a million knives digging into my nerves and my brain trying to break out of my skull. My vocal cords slowly wake from paralysis, and I want to cry out but can’t. I can feel the nails being hammered into my heart as my cities rebuild, and the child within me cries. The first willing twitch is almost scream-worthy, but I hold myself together as much as I can with a terrorized core. My first words are fingernails scratching my chalk-board throat, but once they are out, saliva begins to pour from my glands. Opening my eyes is like falling. There is nothing to focus on until my entire body makes landfall.

The last things to come back are my emotions, and that sometimes takes hours, maybe even days. My body is awake, but I am numb.  There is nothing left in me to cry or get angry, I can’t even fake a smile because I don’t care. There is absolutely no life to my feelings, and there is something so poetic about that. When they do come back, it’s almost like rain. It begins with a little trickle, a warning, and then a moderate pour. I have learned not to fight the flood, but to float in it. It washes me of the pain, though only temporary. It gives me peace.

After all has recovered, I continue on with my life. I try to fight stress off like a hive of wasps, but there will always be another. I wait. I wait for the earthquake to unleash. I wait for my shaking hands.