Page 128 of Break Me

The creek will see all of it.

I won’t.

I step down the small worn path to the flat rock near the water’s edge. This is where I sit when I need to think. The current whispers over the rocks, unchanged by everything that's changed in me. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t wait.

I lower myself onto the rock.

For a long time, I don’t cry.

I just sit as the doctor’s voice replays in pieces.

Aggressive.

Inoperable.

Weeks to months.

The words don’t feel real. They feel distant, like they belong to someone else.

I press my palm against my stomach. I thought this feeling was life. I thought this was a beginning.

I almost laugh at the cruelty of it.

The nausea. The exhaustion. The tenderness.

My body was growing something. Just not what I believed.

The first tear falls without warning.

It surprises me.

Then another follows.

I fold forward slowly, elbows resting on my knees, hands covering my mouth as the sound finally comes.

It isn’t loud.

It isn’t dramatic.

It’s low, pulled from somewhere deeper than my chest.

The creek keeps moving. The world keeps moving. Birds rustle in the trees overhead. And I cry until my ribs ache. Until my breath stutters. Until there’s nothing left to hold back.

I’m going to die.

Not someday. Not when I’m old and grey.

Weeks. Maybe months.

Soon.

I’m going to leave him. The thought hurts more than anything else. Not the pain. Not the sickness.

Samuel.

I lift my head and watch the creek.

The current slips around every rock in its path without resistance. It never wastes itself fighting what it can't move. It bends. It yields. Then it keeps going, finding another way forward.