The Missing Half

by Ashley Flowers

I learned years ago that numbness is better than pain. I’ve been not talking for so long, I’m not sure I’d even know how to start.

Most people’s reaction when they’re confronted is fight or flight. I freeze. And I hate myself for it.

“You know?” I don’t have time for self-righteousness right now, but this is my button. People thinking they can empathize with my pain because they listened to a fifty-five-minute episode about it once.

Over time, my grief has morphed to anger. Now it lives just beneath my skin. Prick it and I bleed.