Prologue
There’s nothing worse than losing someone you love. That horrible feeling of loss you get when you realize a piece of you is gone and you know it will never return. I loved Chase with every beat of my soul. He was my person—my everything. Then he was ripped away from me. It was a tragedy that should’ve only happened in a movie or story book. But it happened to me that one fateful night over six months ago.
I try not to think back on that night, even though I often find myself wondering how I ever let it get to the point it did? That butterfly effect where splices in time could’ve been altered or modified just slightly enough to change the fate of our stars.
We could’ve chosen to stay home instead of going to our friend’s birthday party. I could’ve taken away the last few beers Chase pounded down, or waited until he was more sober before letting him drive home. We both had a little too much to drink, but that didn’t stop me from pleading with him to give me the keys, begging for him to stay at Horatio’s house instead of getting behind the wheel. Like most inebriated idiots, Chase didn’t think he was that drunk. But he was. He was drunk enough to get behind the wheel. Drunk enough to pull out of the parking lot. Drunk enough to make the biggest mistake of his life that ended up costing us everything.
I still remember how fast my heart was beating inside of my chest. The increase of its rhythm as he swerved haphazardly into the other lane. And the minute it stalled inside my chest whenall those lights illuminated the cab of his truck, and the glass shattered around us.
The horn.
The panic.
The fucking last few seconds I had with him.
I remember it all like it was on a constant loop inside my mind. The fucked-up vision of my husband’s last few moments on earth swirling around in my head like a record that never stops playing.
There was a moment where he looked me dead in the eye and all I could see was the fear in each tiny speck of green surrounding his pupil. Guilt hid behind his normally confident smile, rising up all at once, then in one second, erasing from the very existence we both took for granted.
He knew he had fucked up. But there wasn’t time to say he was sorry, or try to correct his mistake. No… when it’s your time, everything happens in a split second, and you’re gone before mistakes can ever be forgiven. And I haven’t forgiven him. I don’t think I ever will.
What Chase did that night was selfish and reckless. Not that I didn’t know that about him when I married him. His recklessness had always been a huge turn on for me, but now I hated it almost as much as I hated him.
God, why didn’t he just listen to me instead of arguing with me that night? Why did he have to get behind that wheel and drive when he was intoxicated? Why did God spare my life and take his instead?
It was a question I always asked myself. Why? Why was I spared? Why did I still exist?
People don’t understand the eternal darkness a person feels when their soulmate is ripped away from them. That happiness you used to feel seeps out of you, replaced by an internal misery that festers and sits inside your soul, consuming everything untilit swallows you whole. That kind of pain eats you from the inside out, taking away all the good in the world and replacing it with a grey veil of nothingness that snuffs out all your light.
My light died the moment Chase took his last breath—a final exhale taken six months ago today. That was when my husband left me alone on this planet—replacing my happiness with a bitter sadness that I can no longer bear.
No one understands.
Not my mother.
Not my father.
Certainly not the friends who turned their backs on me when they couldn’t bear to see the pain in my eyes, or the wound he left me with that never healed after his departure.
Nobody gets the internal hell being without him has caused me.
A hell I no longer can stand living in.
There’s nothing left for me here. Nothing that’s worth living for, anyway.
I’d rather battle the ethereal world of the afterlife with Chase, our two hearts beating to the same ghostly rhythm, than take another miserable shallow breath on this ghastly rock we all call home.
So, on this eve of my husband’s death, I salute those who managed to move on with their lives after losing their person—the people who somehow found that extra beat in their hearts to keep them going after their world was shattered into a kaleidoscope of loss and depression like mine.
I envy that kind of strength.
It’s the strength I wish I had, instead of the weakness that has me gripping this bottle of pills, ready to dump every single one down my throat, and join my Chase up in heaven.
The pills sat heavy in my hands, like tiny little grenades ready to obliterate everything wrong in my world. This was the onlyway. It wasn’t like God was going to intervene and show me a purpose after months of turning his back on me and taking away the only person that ever mattered to me. He didn’t care. Nobody fucking cared about me but Chase.
“Chase, if you’re up there. I’m sorry I let you down. I just can’t stay here any longer without you. I’m coming home, baby. Back to the only arms that will ever keep me warm. Back to my person and the only heart that will ever belong to me. I love you now, forever, always, and every space in between.”
My hands shook as I raised my fist to my lips, tears streaming down the sides of my face like empty rivers of sorrow as I thought about him saying those words to me during his vows.
