The Survivor

I woke up crying. That’s new. I dreamed of a survivor, who was a survivor and not much more. They had come through hell together, the three of them. And now that they were out of hell, she had no more purpose. She couldn’t focus without the adrenalin, couldn’t succeed unless the stakes were life and death, couldn’t relate to the petty problems of life, burst out at those around her and then apologized in horror at herself and wept in shame.

And she wanted to go back. In guilt she wanted to go back to that place where she had felt useful and alive and … good. Where the terror of death was simple and sweet. She didn’t want to survive only to feel herself fall. And the old soldier and the young soldier who had been there with her tried to help her. She had survived something she had never been intended to die from. Accident had put her there and struggle had brought her out and know she didn’t know how to stop struggling, to live in a world with nothing to struggle against.

She cried and I woke crying and didn’t want to sleep again.