Teetering

(This is an attempt at a death scene of some sort. It could be a little morbid for some, just some fair warning. Just wanted to try, not in a morbid mood or anything.)

Another seizure wracked my body and I was left with nothing but numbing pain. My mind clouded and I felt myself slip. An eternity later the searing pain and white noise faded to a dull roar and eventually a deep rhythmic thumping that surged with the pulse of my heart.

I was back, though more and more now I wondered why. I kept clinging on but damn it hurt. The pain seemed to be so encompassing now I couldn't even tell where it was originating from. Sometimes the people were there, or I imagined they were, other times it was just pain and struggle.
I took a long shuddering breath. It burned. The rush of oxygen brought my sense back, cleared my vision and dragged me back into the here and now. White hot clear distinct pain shot through me. I would have curled up in a ball and whimpered but my body was far beyond that now.
My mind, that's all I had left now, seemed only capable of processing the ever increasing onslaught of pain. Eventually the white hot knives of pain receded into a dull searing pain that would have bent strong men, but it was still somehow a relief. It was the best I had been for a long time now. I bent my will, dragging dregs of energy out of some deep place where it seemed the pain had not yet managed to rob me of all. I lay, drawing on this faint trickle, pooling it below the surface for a single burst of energy. It took time. I didn't know I had even had anything left to draw from but it seemed there was a little fight left in me yet.
Finally, in a massive surge of energy, I dragged my dry worn eyelids open and let in the insanely painful light. I had no idea what had driven me to do it. I could barely see. The eyes had gone pretty early on in the disease. I could still make out shadows passing across my vision and I could hear the startled staff, and possibly family, excitedly rushing about as if everything was about to change. I would have laughed, smiled even, if I could have. Nothing was going to change. This body would never come back. The mind, though it was still there, would never recover from this. I was done. There was nothing left. I was just teetering now, waiting for my feral instincts, the parts of me that completely ignored my conscious mind, to let me be; to let me slip away.
In these last moments I just wanted to cry. I wanted to let it all out. The frustration, the futility. A lifetime of wasted seconds, fragments of time squandered. I wanted none of these seconds. I wanted it to be over. I didn't want the pain, I was sure I didn't deserve it. I just wanted to let go, I wanted to be able to let go. I wanted to scream. I wanted the pain to stop so badly that had I had the energy I would of torn the last breaths from my own body and ended it.

I felt it coming a moment before it hit and my eyes shut just before the seizure. It was longer than the last. I couldn't breathe. My body fought, god knows where it found the energy to even contract the muscles. Inside I screamed. I had been screaming for ever now. Nothing came out but the forced bursts of air grunting as the involuntary muscle contractions tossed my ravaged body like a rag doll for an agonizing eternity. This would be it. I couldn't possibly recover from this one. I still hadn't taken a breath. My body wouldn't make it. I could barely think through the pain, my mind was clouding again, darkening. The pain didn't ease but I knew this was it, it was the end. The darkness grew and grew. Blackness swallowed me.
I welcomed it.

Nooooo!!! The pain tore me back into this hateful place of misery and endless suffering. Why!! Why, why, why!! I just want to let go. I can't do this any more. I can't do it any more. I don't want to be alive. This is so far from life. I can't do this!! I wont! But of course I am. Why can't I let myself go. Again the deep need to burst into tears rose from a place I can't even describe. I just wanted it all to stop, for everything to end. There was nothing left of me, nothing worth holding on to.

Holding on.

Ah.
I am sorry my love. It was the pain. I am sorry. I can still feel you. The pressure of your hand. I know you want me to hold on but sometimes it is so hard. The pain makes me forget you. I never want to forget you. I am sorry.