Draft Excerpt

I am back laying on my old bed again and I feel myself lost in intrusive memories of past ghosts.  I can still feel myself heaving a few months younger than now. The thrashing is most prominent, the fear I recall only secondly.  I remember the first time I heaved, it was after the assault.  I was at a party when soon I lost control.  My face contorted and my breath was lodged somewhere in between my throat and something heavy and itchy.  It was yarn in my throat but I could not cough it up and soon the pressure in my throat intensified and the waves of fear came crashing like the ocean and I was the sand disintegrating underneath. Nothingness. I tried to speak and silence came for awhile but soon the shrieks collapsed over me and the heaving, the heaving, oh god, oh god, the heaving. I soon lost feeling in my arm but not before the tingling washed over my entire body.  I knew I was dying, I just was not sure from what. Hours later, while I sat in between long pauses in an abandoned parking lot I realized I had a nervous breakdown.  As the sun creeped up the following day my eyes burned from the salt tears that poured all night. There were indents around my eyes like circles around wheat crops that came from a place far away from here.  The swell around my eyes would not subside like a puffered fish still risen in fear long after the enemy has gone, awkwardly and embarrassingly.  In truth, no one in my town had nervous breakdowns, not at 19 at least, and soon friend's walked lightly around me as though I was a mirror slowly cracking into two and everyone began to wither away. But, I was too preoccupied in between heavings at the time to notice. The years have accumulated since and the heavings followed and the yarn in my throat got bigger and bigger and tighter and tighter.  This is what it feels like to come home for Thanksgiving.