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It’s after midnight, and I feel haunted.

Everything is fine. Everyone is home, but I’m still awake. Tossing and turning, running my hands frantically through my hair, hot and wrong.

I can’t see it, but something isn’t right. It’s off.

It’s wrong.

I’m scared and I reach for my dog, who shifts every time I do, as if she too can’t sleep as she waits for another shoe to drop.

Darkness. Unknown. Unclear. Unseen.

“Did you sleep at all?” I’m asked later.

How can I when it’s all wrong? The world. This night.

The air is cool. The fog is rolling in, but the darkness never shifts, lying over us and holding us down like a heavy blanket.

It all started normal enough. It all started with a single thought, and I lost something and gained enough worries to drive away anyone’s sanity. It’s like I’m lying here waiting. I’m lying here wishing I knew what happened, why it did—what’s going to happen next.

We’re never done until we are.

It’s never done until we’re all done, or until sunrise, when there’s enough light to cast back all of the shadows and reveal all that was hidden.

So I lie here and wait.

Wait for the light.

Wait for the answers.

Wait for it to make some sense.

But even the innocent light of day that trickles through the trees isn’t enough to shine light on what haunts me—on what ails my whole house—or what follows my whole family around as they try and live their days with a hole in their heart and a burning question in their mind that never really goes away.

But I keep waiting. I keep wanting an answer. I keep searching for truth.

And I keep holding onto any good thought I manage to find. Because things always look black after midnight, but a new day brings a new chance for it all to be okay.

So I hope. And I wait for the day that it actually is.

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Relephant Read:

5 Ways to Empower a Grieving Warrior.

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Author: Stacy Porter

Editor: Toby Israel

Photo: Author’s Own // Don O’Brien/Flickr

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