When I first heard the news everything went blank. I didn't feel anything, just complete and total numbness. It was as if all these walls went up around me because I think a part of me knew that if I let down my guard and let myself believe, all hell would break loose inside of me. So I just refused to even try to comprehend how this could be. I let myself go on like this for months in complete denial. People would give me their condolences and sympathies and in some ways I felt gratitude towards them and would muster up a reply but it was as if my insides had been deadened to it all.
I stood there atop the sand dunes and in that moment, just for a tiny ounce of a second, I was invincible. And then, as if the wind had carried it over the hills