Sorry I’m Not Sorry

It’s a curious kind of survivors’ guilt. Not the kind that makes me feel guilty for still being alive when someone else is dead, but the kind that makes me feel bad for not feeling bad.

Women who have lost babies, husbands and parents all continue to mourn for their loss. They soften their days and enter their slumber with the help of drugs. The years go by and they continue to write eulogies for the dead. Ghosts swirl around as the backdrop to their lives.

I am not defined by the ‘worst thing that ever happened‘. As time slips by, the picture of the green garbage bag and the red gas cylinder seared into my brain, turns yellow, curls and fades like a photo left in the sun. It is no longer a framed picture beside my bedside table, but a snapshot in a forgotten photo album.

Heartless, cold and in denial. People assume this is why I am able to move on.

I’m sorry but I can’t live my life as a memorial to an event that happened one sunny day in April, 2010.  Things went wrong, a bad thing happened and the world shuddered into a different rotation.

But the wound has healed and now all that remains is a faint scar noticeable only when another man succeeds in walking the same path to oblivion.

I’m not sorry my mourning clothes have been burned in the fire of happiness. I’m not sorry the ghosts of regret and responsibility have disintegrated in the bright light of joy. I’m not sorry my pain has been soothed by the fragrant oil of a deep, sacred, loving connection.

I’m sorry I’m not sorry.