Phantom Limb

by Lucinda Berry

I understood why Emily spent so much time sleeping. It was the closest you could get to death without physically dying.

Emily and I were two parts that made a whole, and I was only half of a person without her.

Now it was as if part of my body had been suddenly chopped off. I was an amputee, and like any amputee, I was left with the excruciating phantom pain of being tortured by my lost limb.

All the life had been sucked out of me.

“Nobody understands me. Nobody. For once, just once, I want someone to know what it’s like to be me. Why doesn’t anyone get it?”

The prospect of living a new way of life was more terrifying than any anticipation of my death.

The person becomes fragmented from themselves in some way. They disconnect or disassociate from themselves and the environment around them.”

How was it possible that there were nine hundred pages of mental disorders?

I stepped delicately around them, and they dictated everything I said or did. I’d lost the Emily I knew a long time ago, and I’d been mourning her disappearance for years.

I didn’t like sex stuff. Never had.

Emily’s death happened two years ago? This