Rise From The Ashes (EDITING IN PROGRESS)

Chapter 2

I have faced many obstacles in my thirty-one years of life, but nothing compares to losing my son. When a parent loses a child it's a different type of pain. It's a pain that consumes you and swallows you whole. It leaves you damaged and broken. It leaves you to question everything you ever believe and stand for.

Losing Zaren has made it a struggle I never thought I would have to endure.

When I close my eyes, I can still hear his laughter echo off the walls of my apartment. Remember the way his chest would rise and fall as he slept beside me, or the many times he would pop his head into my room and ask if I wanted to watch a movie with him.

Those memories are distant now and is starting to feel foreign to me. I don't see or hear them the way I did when he first passed. In fact the more time progresses, the harder it is to remember his voice.

I soon fear it will slip away and become a distant memory, and when it does so will the last of my joy.

I wish I could say my dreams are better and I get to see my Zaren there, but I would be lying. My dreams are cold and lonely just like my reality.

Even my dreams have turned dark and dangerous to my own mind.

I sometimes feel like it's not only my dreams that are filled with dark thoughts that destroy and wreck havoc on my life, but also my own mind betraying me, so it doesn't really matter what reality I live in because they're both one in the same.

I have dealt with this pain and grief for two years now and it hasn't changed. And whoever agrees that time heals all wounds must not have faced a trauma so terrible that it shook them to their core. Time doesn't heal all wounds. It's a damn lie told to give someone who lost there way; hope. Hope for a better tomorrow... future.

I learned to cope with the misery and pain. It became a part of me. It latched onto my soul and we become one as it covered my wounded, bleeding scars.

I'll never be healed.

The constant pain that lingers in me has changed me. I'm no longer the happy Braxlyn who smiles all the time. I guess when one experiences so much trauma in their life it changes you into someone you don't recognize. Like me for instance. I got so use to pain that I don't know what it feels like to be happy, and that's ok. This is who I am now. I have come to terms with it and I have accepted it.

I deserve it after all.

The ten minute walk from Dr. Carson's office to my job, I silently cry.  Truth be told I hate crying. My face gets red and blotchy and my eyes swell up, but I need this. I need to allow myself to cry even if it's for a few minutes. I'm sure I'll do more crying when I'm locked in the confinement of my own room.

I always do.

It's a typical busy Thursday afternoon as I look around and observe the people around me as they rush through the busy streets of New York.

I pretty petite lady with blonde hair and big framed sunglasses smiles and laughs at who I assume to be her husband, as he whispers in her ear as they both wait to cross the busy street.

I smile as he wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her close as he kisses the crown of her head.

One of the beauties about living in New York is the people in it. Whether they live here or are just visiting, they each have their own story to tell, each have faced their own troubles, own devastations, own happiness. We're all so alike yet we're each uniquely different people with one big thing in common. We all have someplace to be.

Life in New York doesn't slow down. It continue to go on, day in and day out.

Coming to a stop in front of a white cobblestone brick building, I look up and read the words "Rustic Diner" in big bold flashing red letters. I've walked these streets and stopped in front of this building nearly everyday for over a decade.  This is my home away from home. My job.