Thoughts on an alternate universe

People congratulate me on my ability to talk about my past.
They marvel at my dry eyes as I speak of life,
and suffering,
and tragedy,
and death.

What they don't realize is that I am not talking.
The person who speaks so sincerely
is from an alternate universe--
a universe where pain doesn't exist,
and where words are devoid of meaning and emotion.
Not for the listener,
but for me.

It isn't that I have no tears.
I have them,
they just don't come out during talks,
or during demonstrations of others' suffering.

When I speak, I might get a bit hoarse,
a bit breathy,
but I don't cry.
When I listen to others speak,
tears generally don't come,
and when they do,
it's only because
for a slight moment
you have breached my alternate universe
and touched the real me.

The real me feels.
The real me still,
even after 20 years,
sobs uncontrollably at the thought of my husband
growing cold in his hospital bed.

It hardly ever happens when I think of my husband, though.
It comes unexpectedly,
when Rose is separated from Dr. Who by an impenetrable wall
and she must live out her life in an alternate universe
where she is surrounded by beauty
and love
and people who love her--
in fact, she is surrounded by everything…
except the one person that she needs more than anything else in the world.

How did you eventually come to feel, Rose?
I mean, before the happy ending that was truly bittersweet.
Did you learn how to live again,
or were you stuck in a universe within your universe
where you existed as a shell,
perfect and beautiful on the outside
and dark and void on the inside?

I know that I might
one day
live to love again.
The question is
do I want to?

How could I ever open up my heart again,
knowing that it could all come crashing down
as it did before?

It has taken so long to feel healed--
I don't know that I could survive it,
should it happen again.

And so, I continue on in my half-life.
I live in the moment
and I try not to think of the people that I've lost.

But every once in a while,
I will turn on a show
one that ends in happiness or sadness,
it's all the same to me, really,
and I will feel a strange sort of satisfaction
in the tears trickling down my cheeks.

No, they're not tears about my situation--
that is too painful to inhabit--
but they are tears, nonetheless,
and it feels good
for a time
to feel normal.