Haunted Halo
She woke up sobbing and a heavy sense of old, familiar grief hung over her like a fog. "I don't even want to remember what that dream was about," she whispered to the dark night air. Despite her words, Jesse lay awake for a long while trying to recall the dream, but instead the memory came up from deep within the cavern of her heart, and she cried again.
Oh, God, I don't want to go here; this ancient wound is as agonizing today as it was sixteen years ago, she noticed.
I wonder if I would have done it differently had I known this. Some decisions change us forever in ways we cannot predict, and because of them we can't change back. And some experiences are indelibly engraved into our soul and even forgiveness cannot undo their mark. Jesse knew in her mind this could not be true, but nothing had ever been able to convince her heart.
She woke up in the morning feeling groggy, like she hadn't slept well, moving through her routine reluctantly, paralyzed in the web of a merciless memory whose venom dove deeper into the core of her being anytime she tried to free herself from its clutches. She walked a long time in the woods that day wanting desperately to come out of this melancholy mood. But it wasn't a mood, and letting it go seemed impossible; who would I be without this? Who am I still because of it? The fog was slow to burn off, and Jesse spent the next several days in a haze, longing for a reality in which she didn't feel the constant ache of wanting to be free. Each night she went outside to the top of the hill overlooking the river, and sat listening to frogs serenade the valley, each other, or perhaps God. She'd close her eyes, remember, and soon tears would be streaming down her face.
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