The Headache

I am now alone.
Peter has gone off on his new European adventure, my nephew, Alan, has gone home to Long Island and there are no students in my apartment. So this is it...the moment that I have been waiting for. I am tired, afraid and in pain. Soon I will be finished with my commitments to work and then it will be just me, myself and I. Time to step through the doorway.

My dream work homework is to be the girl with my Dad. In the dream we are going down to White River and we stop to look at the damage from the flood. Walking hand in hand...me, the girl....he, my Dad. Me not managing to avoid scary intimacy....steering the conversation away from matters of the heart. When I can feel into this homework I cry from the sadness that he is gone and I so long for his strong supportive arms around me. In that tiny opening of feeling the door opens. I have put one foot across the threshold but it is too much. I fear being overwhelmed by the pain of grief and loss....all those years of being lost to myself.

I am a coward.....so I take the more familiar path of nihilism and opt for that head splitting physical pain instead of the sweet soft pain of loss. I go through my day in a state of numbness.
The voices inside tell me that these headaches will never end and that my life is becoming a barren wasteland. I might as well be dead.
I go to bed still in this place of despair but pray for a dream that will help me find my way out.