Day The Earth Stood Still

I measured my daily success on a scale, a dismal scale of abhorrence.  On one end there were the days that were just bleak enough to provide sufficient numbing of the soul, nothing that couldn't be amply perked up with a proper drink.  The opposite end were those days that I thanked a higher power that I never carried a firearm or any other mortally wounding machinery on my person.  Those were the days that sapped me of any sense of humanity or repercussions.  My out for blood days.  That is what my life had become, to which my pride had yet to fully disclose.  

I hated myself for coming back to Detroit.  It was a decision granted by a feeble mind.  A mind under the influence of naivete and an optimism symptomatic of grave inexperience.  Nothing had improved as I had hoped, not financially nor emotionally.  My feet had been firmly encased in a cement block of a relationship and it was only a matter of time before my entire body would be thrown off the bridge into the abyss below.  The dangling carrot that had drawn me back, closer to him, had become laughable.  It had only been an excuse.  An excuse that conveniently placed the weight of blame on my shoulders.  I had righted my wrongs and yet was no further ahead.  No frothy white gown lay in my future, no ceremonial walk down any aisle.  

The day had been one where neither fiery daggers nor verbal weaponry had been discharged.  It was a bowl of melty ice cream kind of day.  All the flavors ran together in a soup that was anything but gestalt.  Simply walking took effort but for no apparent reason.  I wasn't sick, I wasn't stressed.  I just was.  

I locked myself away in my room, larger than most people's entire apartments.  It was easy to get lost inside and never exit to greet my roommate with idle pleasantries.  I dropped my bags, subconsciously hoping that somehow I could kill my laptop, symbolically murdering all effort put forth at my current agency.  Splayed out on my bed, I practiced my then daily routine of fighting off an inevitable slumber while simultaneously searching for some sort of calm.  A lazy person's version of meditation.  I was about fifteen minutes into this mental unfurling of my day when the digital scream of my phone jolted me upward.  

My pulse quickened as the caller identification revealed her name.  I had not heard a word from her since an email three weeks prior.  When the voice on the other end revealed itself as her sister's, I knew.  The ground fell out from under me.  

"Mom, I got her.  It's Jessica," I could hear the clicking of heels and the transfer of the phone.  But I was not there, I was on another planet.  

"Jessica."  It wasn't a question, but more of a statement.  My mind was a swirling mass of emotional debris.  I knew what was coming, I knew it was here, please God help me, I can't deal with this now, if I hang up will it negate anything?  "We lost her.  We lost Melissa."

And there it was.