Intervention

For the last three months, I haven’t wrote, barely talked on my favorite forums, in fact, just barely had time to squeak out a set or two of pictures. Between fighting a cold, taking care of my family, both extended and immediate, and running a mind boggling array of errands I have barely been able to rest for more than three or four hours at a time, much less actually do something I truly enjoy.

Tara moved at the beginning of October. We had a quiet dinner, punctuated with I –will- see- you- soon-s, and promises to write, but in the end, we both knew our moment had past. I was lucky to have held her in my arms, to have tasted her passion and spice, but it was time to let her go, to flit off as a free spirit does. I would never be the one who trapped her beauty.

Jackson and Wynn have both put up with me being insanely busy fairly well. Jackson being sick for most of September and Wynn being caught up in work and unable to visit, they both had time restraints of their own. We still talked, texting being a girl’s best friend, catching up while stuck in traffic or waiting in line at the deli, and at night Wynn’s voice would sooth me to sleep, sometimes at his amusement as I drifted off mid sentence.

He was always saying to me that I needed to slow down, I was running myself ragged, as well as my other friends that managed to get me to slow down long enough to say hello. For some reason I just couldn’t. I felt as if the world revolved around me completing each task every person had set out before me, that if I stopped, or told one person no, everything would come crashing down. So my calendar kept getting fuller, and my time shorter.

Emily Dickinson once wrote, “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me;”. It seems to me that this holds true for life as well. Sometimes life is going to stop you, even if you have to slam head long into a brick wall.

Two days ago I woke up in my bed frightened, groggy and disoriented. I could have sworn that someone was in my home. Not so much that I had heard a sound, but a feeling that the air had changed. I tried searching my mind, trying to recall if I had locked the door, but nothing made sense, and my time had long ago been skewed by days of mere napping. I fought to gain control of my fear then squeaked out , “Who’s there?”

Panic rose higher, I heard the wind pushing the oak against my window and I gulped, finding it hard to breath. I was still in my clothes. My shoes at a clump on the floor, the knee length black skirt rising around my thighs, and the white pen-stripe shirt wrinkled and twisted around my large torso. My back arched, ears straining, I listened for sounds, for anything, I reached over to my nightstand in the dark to pull out my taser.

My scream was quickly stifled by a large hand across my mouth as my hand found not my savior in the drawer, but the devil himself. Swinging with my other hand, while trying to bite my assailant I quickly began struggling. It was like hitting solid cement. Nothing seemed to affect him. I brought my leg up but it was quickly pinned under one of his, arching up I tried bucking him off but he had already pinned both arms under me and grabbed the one free leg as I tried to use my heal in the soft tissues of his lower back.

Fear rose up and still I struggled, then quickly went still. Slowly letting his hand from my mouth and relaxing. I sharply rose my head to try to break his nose with my forehead. My assailant quickly yanked his head back up and he laughed. It took a moment to sink in, that he was laughing at me. There was something oddly familiar, unmistakable, the laugh had no malice, only amusement yet still he held me tightly underneath him.