Touched

Karen didn’t seem particularly well that day. Her eyes lacked their shining alertness. “I felt like I was going insane. On the edge of falling to the other side and I couldn’t see who I was anymore,” she said. We walked together in the park in the coolness of the fall evening. Her brows furrowed and her mouth tightened. I asked her, "what are you thinking? She did not reply. She became dark and cloudy. Words were twisting inside of her. "I am becoming my own person, separate from this madness," she said. "I am going to stop listening to the noise inside me. No longer will it torment me. Yesterday something inside me turned off. The loud confusion suddenly stopped.” She looked scared. “For the first time I feel I am alone.” I wanted to do something ease her pain but I was unsure. I started to give her a hug and she shivered in my arms. She looked up with teary eyes but a smile lightened her face as she said, “I don’t feel so alone anymore.”