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Don't Stop Believing
She leaned back against my shoulder. The warmt of her skin made me shiver. Inside I felt so cold and alone and in that moment there was nothing. No hope to look forward to, no will to keep going. As I watched her gentle fingertips press the keys, it was like a magic I once knew and could do. But right now I couldn’t, you could call it writer’s block or whatever you like but I just felt lost. I waited patiently as she finished so I could read it. I wasn’t sure if it would make sense to me. Something that had once been simple was so hard lately. As I try to read the words appearing before me on the screen, I couldn’t. I just feel like a soldier, wounded at war, staggering to get away from the front battle line. It’s like I’ve trapped myself inside my own brilliant mind, with no way to break the cycle I have created. She turns and looks at me and says “You can do it. You can make that brilliant imagination of yours come to life again through these words. Just try and let go of the memories good and bad, that have plagued your mind since you can remember,” My face looks like a blank canvas and I know she can see it. But I can’t respond so I don’t, I remain silent and nod. I take the laptop from her. She watches as my hands hover over the keyboards. I want to press the keys to make something appear but I can’t. The words that usually came easy to me remain hidden away. As Sara lies back and slowly falls asleep, I press the delete button to erase the sentences. She’s right about one thing, I know I can write, but I just sit here staring at the blank screen appearing before my eyes. My imagination begs for me to type but there’s nothing. I wonder if I will ever write another novel. Like the ones that have inspired so many other people to write like me.
The minutes pass ever so slow. My breathing gets heavier and quicker with each second that passes by. The muscles in my chest feel like they’re tightening and I can’t force them to relax. My hands become sweaty almost straight away. In an attempt to stop these feelings I lay my head back against the head-board. My breathing quickens even more and I feel worse. My stomach churns inside; I immediately get up and run to the bathroom as fast as I can.
As I throw up the contents of my stomach, the constant heaving makes my chest and shoulders hurt. I can hardly breathe as I continue to empty my stomach of all the food I’d ate during the day. After what feels like an eternity, I finally stop and slowly lean my back against the cold wall. I look over towards the bed and see that Sara is sitting upright. The expression on her face tells me what she’s thinking. I knew she was worried about me. Ever since my father had died six months ago, I had changed into a different person.
I could still remember the day he’d sat me down to tell me the bad news.
“Son I’m sick. You remember that scan I told you I was getting done? Well today I found out the results. I have a tumour on my brain,” he’d said tears slowly coming to his eyes. I sat there silent trying to figure out how to reply. I didn’t want to believe what he had told me was true, but I knew deep down inside it was.
Never once in all my life had I ever seen my father shed a tear. Never had I seen a look of fear in his eyes.
“I don’t have much time left, probably about six months if I’m lucky,” he continued waiting for me to take accept the reality.
Quickly I gained my composure, knowing that my father wouldn’t want me to be scared.
“I’ll be here with you every step of the way,”
“I know you will son,” he replied wiping away the tears on his face.
As the time passed quickly by so did my father’s memories. Towards the end it appeared he hardly recognized me at all. But I knew deep inside he did; the tumor had just made it harder. A few weeks later the day had finally arrived when the doctors had told me it wouldn’t be much longer until he passed. But still I remained by his side right like he had done with me when mum had left. As he took his last breath, his finally words had been ‘I love you son’. A few moments later he was gone and so was apart of me.
My childhood had been a fairytale if you could call it one. When my parents first realized I wasn’t just a normal child; that I could spell words and read books like To Kill a Mockingbird at the tender age of four, it was hard for them to deal with it. Especially my mum and by the time I was six, she had left my father to take care of me on his own. But from that moment on he was there for me, every step of the way, teaching me everything that he knew and loved.
Maybe that’s how I sometimes imagine Sara as a mother rather than a girlfriend. She was my professor but is now a colleague. When I was a thirteen year old college student, she had been there as a mentor; helping me fall in love with the words from centuries before.
I can still remember the day I wandered into the college as a skinny looking thirteen year old kid. As I walked the hall all the time bumping into the older students as they promptly moved along to their classes. And when I reached the end of the hall I met Sara greeting me with a huge smile across her face.
“Today is the day where magic begins, where you’ll learn how to use that genius mind of yours,” she’d said as we shuck hands.
“Okay,” I had replied my hands shaking nervously.
“I’m going to be your guide, your teacher, and hopefully your mentor.”
Smiling to myself I got up off the bathroom floor and made my way back to bed. Sara still remained sitting upright and looked towards me as I approached.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m alright. Don’t worry I’ll be okay,”
Gently I kissed her forehead as I moved in beside her. I grabbed the laptop once again, but this time instead of staring at the screen waiting for the words to magically appear I started to type.
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