avalanche.

I drop to the ground and sit against a wall and just breathe, counting each inhale, exhale, like I’m doing reps.

I can’t figure out whether I'm about to laugh or cry. I feel more ready to cry, actually, a whole ocean of tears pawing at the space behind my eyes. But it’s not shock or sadness, or anger or happiness, either. It’s richer. Maybe it is shock. It’s just an overwhelming feeling. 

Feeling. So I know that I can feel. That’s enough for me, for now.

Another breath. Another glorious healthy compression of my lungs. Another one, and another one, and another one.

Well, I’m crying now. Bawling my eyes out. I couldn’t really say why except – maybe I’m thankful, yes, that’s it, so heart-burstingly thankful for everything.

Thankful for the sunlight. For solid ground. For being able to remember being six at the swingset. For the taste of sizzling bacon. For laughter and movies and music and the beach. For my family. For my friends. For the fact that I have time to spend and people I want to spend it with.

Thankful for the look on her face as she turned to me in those final moments with her eyes half open from behind the tubes, her hand draped around mine in the strongest grip she could muster. Like she was saying “go get ‘em, bud,” like she did with an encouraging smile when I used to hover on the sidelines, too shy to join the other boys in their pickup soccer games; or the early mornings when she'd dropped me off before debate tournaments; or at graduation, when she'd found me in those brief crazy minutes before I walked.

I’m not sad, I don’t think. Or maybe this is really sadness. I don’t know and I can’t try to figure it out right now. Everything’s so vividly bright and everything hurts at once. Doing reps, in and out.

But I’ve known this would happen for a long time and I’ve imagined what it would feel like, and it’s not supposed to be like this.  It’s not supposed to be heaving sobs and tears that won't give up jostling their way down your face, drenching your sleeves and making a mockery of the twenty-three years you've spent learning to "man up."

Feelings are so hard to understand until they tumble over you like an avalanche and crush you to the bone with the miraculous agony of…well, of being able to feel.