Everything was just so weird.
Survivor’s guilt was worse than I could have ever imagined it would feel like, this sense of being the most epic failure in every way imaginable as the world trudged along with me, slowly consuming me. Right in the feels. My insides have felt twisted, upside down, hollowed out, since the accident, non-stop with no respite. The awful, gut churning questions, the what ifs, the whys and why nots, they flowed and ebbed. This wasreally the first moment of peace I’d found between all of that. I’m headed home to a reminder of all there wasn’t anymore, and all the thoughts that inevitably creep up on me.
Did they feel any pain?
Was it quick?
Were they scared?
Did they see it coming?
Why my parents?
Why not me?
Why did that driver have so much to drink?
Why did they get behind the wheel?
Why did they put every other driver on the road at risk like that?
Why did they get off so easily, killing two innocent people?
It’s murder, plain and simple. My parents were murdered by a drunk driver, and he’ll be out on the streets again in less than two years.
Why is our legal system referred to as a justice system when it’s anything but? Two years for two lives doesn’t seem just at all to me. None of it was fair. It was all shit.
Just… WHY?
There were no answers. I knew this. There was no good reason why. None of this would ever make sense. What if-ing myself to death was futile. It was killing me, all of it.
And if that wasn’t enough, the comments from people…
Screw those idiots trying to tell me everything happens for a reason. I hope they step in a huge, heaping pile of karmic dog crap, flop to their ass, and bruise their tailbone. What a shit thing to say. Just… yeah, eff that crap. It’s insensitive, is what it is.
Not everything happens for a reason! Don’t say that to a loved one after a death, ever.
Sometimes bad shit happens to good people. They didn’t deserve it. They’re never coming back. It’s sad and awful and leaves huge empty holes in our lives and there’s no amount of anything that’ll make any of it better, especially not weird, gross, supposed supportive sentiments that just make you want to throat punch a bitch for saying it.
If only for a brief moment, the Tree boys in all their zany glory had offered me a brief reprieve from it all, a distraction I desperately needed from my own jumbled thoughts.
Reality clearly back in focus, the stomach twisting was back. Everything was all over the place. Much like my life.
A soft groan left me as my face pulled into a grimace.
There was no one to go home and talk to about all this, confide in, seek comfort, tell me I’m an idiot, just talk it the hell out over a can of pop, a bowl of popcorn, and a good rom com, help me feel human again and not like I’m a total weirdo that’s incapable of peopling. I had no one.
This was probably the most alone I’ve felt in a while.
Thinking of that kiss with Cy once more, I winced. Unbidden, my hand lifted and my fingertips brushed my lips. I hated to say it considering Cypress’ motives planting one on me, but that was- It was-
It hadn’t meant anything to him… and my mouth still tingled from it. I got all shivery and bothered in that stomach flip flopping and full of butterflies way just thinking about it. Our mouths had fit together perfectly. It had been… He’d tasted- I’d felt- I didn’t want to use the wordperfectin reference to anything with Cy, did I?
God, what was I saying? A soft, semihysterical laugh left me. One kiss from my ex bestie’s brother and I’m instantly ga-ga over it? A smooch that meant bupkis to him?
Yeah. Sounds about right. That’s just the shitshow that is my life.
But it was fireworks and butterflies, all that stupid crap spouted out of lovestruck numbskulls trying to wax poetic. I felt the earth move. I was dizzy with it.
