Ghost limbs

6am, and the pre-dawn quiet is punctuated by the soft sounds of snoring nearby and the low buzzing of the air-conditioning.

I give up trying to sleep, and sit up in the sofa, and I look around. I'm the only one left awake. The others are in various corners of the large room in their own worlds.

I am in mine.

There's something lonely about the pregnant stillness that precedes the dawn. The events of the evening (and night and wee hours of the morning) has left me hungover, slightly buzzed, and strangely depressed. Although reeling from severe lack of sleep, my mind won't shut up and it keeps me frustratingly awake. Awake with my thoughts. I fetch my iPod to replace the silence.

The first track which plays is from Aida. The woman's mournful vocals lament a painful truth. And I burst into tears.

Perhaps it's because alcohol is a depressant. As is progesterone. Perhaps it is the questions of commitment that cropped up sometime during the night. Perhaps it's 6am.

Either way, I am suddenly and quite unexpectedly hurting from the memory of my loss. There is gaping hole in a place I haven't looked at in a while. It has healed, but holes will remain holes. Even people who lose limbs still feel the pain from the limb that isn't there anymore - they're called ghost limbs. I'd figured this would come back every now and then, always at the oddest of times, like now.

I sit in that little sofa hugging my knees, crying quietly till I can't breathe anymore. Then I get up to blow my nose.

And that is it. I stop crying, lie back down, close my eyes, and wait till morning.

In the morning, it is gone. And hasn't come back since.