March Prompt D: Jars of Clay lyrics /ineffablefandom

"I'm waiting for the world to fall
I'm waiting for the scene to change
I'm waiting when the colors come
I'm waiting to let my world come undone" -- Jars of Clay

Ever since my encounter with Curtis Ames I've been left with a sense of foreboding, a feeling that somehow that was only the beginning of something far worse. I can't talk about this with anyone, I know what they would say, I've been through it all before.

If I go back and let myself remember how things were before the war, it's easy to get lost within so many competing emotions. I think back on how happy we were, but then I remember too those times I try and tell myself never happened. The times after the war had begun, the ones I want to forget because they spoil that perfect picture. I don't want to think about the arguments that Danijela and I had over her taking the children and leaving the City. I don't want to think about the nights when she cried herself to sleep over what we were putting our children through after we ended up staying. I don't want to see the terror on my babies faces, or hear their screams when shells came too close to the apartment. I don't want to see their bruised and bloodied bodies on that final day.

As the years have passed I've found it easier to be more selective with my memories. I no longer find the darker days haunting my every thought, or invading my sleep through nightmares so real that I often forgot where I was. There was a time when I would never have thought it possible to go an hour let alone a day or even a week without finding myself swallowed by the guilt, or the grief, but that's what has happened. Even more of a surprise though was that I somehow moved on without my realizing it had happened.

When I first came to the United States, I was running away. Croatia held too many memories I needed to escape from and I somehow thought that the farther away I was from there the easier it would be for me to forget. I was wrong of course, but, I couldn't know that then. When I first got here I found myself still running, after getting my license I moved from hospital to hospital, never staying anywhere long enough for anyone to get close, it was too great a risk, not for them, for me. If I let people close it would mean talking about what I had lost, what Ihad left behind, what I wanted from life, and I couldn't answer that, so I ran. Until I found County.

I'll never know why this place was different, and I know, it's had it's ups and downs, maybe that's why I'm so wary now. What Abby and I have now, what we're building between us, and for Joe, it's so close to what I had with Danijela that it scares me. I'm afraid that the sins of my past will come back to haunt me again and God will decide that I don't deserve to have any of this. I'm afraid that he'll take Abby and Joe away from me the way he took Danijela and my children away from me all those years ago and it scares me...