Guilty

There's something about being sick that brings everything into focus. You just don't have the energy to bullshit yourself. Your defenses are down. You're forced, physically and mentally, to confront everything as it hits you.

Your emotions seem to balloon to vast proportions, consuming your thoughts. The strangest part is, though, that they aren't themselves aren't any stronger. You've only opened yourself up to experiencing their full force. You feel yourself to the point of exhaustion.

That happened today, and I nearly suffocated. The tears pricked behind my eyes, and I thought I would lose it right there. I thought I would break down, sobbing, in front of my coworkers and a handful of strangers. Why?

I felt guilty. Oh, God. I felt awful. The minute he looked at me my stomach turned to knots. It felt hard, like a dead weight. It affected my ability to breathe. I wanted to run away. I know that look.

God, oh God, why? Every fucking time.

I shouldn't have felt guilty. Rationally, I know that; of course I do. But stuck in that moment, under the influence of a cold, functioning on too little sleep? Guilt. Cold, hard guilt that screwed itself into my chest until it was stuck tight. It taunted me to pull it out. Pull it out, be rid of the guilt . . . and bleed out on the floor.

I started getting flashes of other, similar faces: all hopeful, all about to be broken--because I'm a horrible person, I guess. It's the only explanation. Once is unfortunate, twice is a coincidence, three times and you're the issue. I'm the issue.

I'll have to see him again. I'll have to say, "Remember the other day?" Then downhill. I'll rip out that weighty shaft of guilt and arm myself with it. I'll turn it into aggression, into hurtful overconfidence. Do I have to? I think so. I've never known any another way.

Then his face--his face will fall and burn itself into my mind. It will join all the other faces--that wretched album of all the people I've hurt.

And the guilt will work itself back in.