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“It only lasts a few minutes, honey. Just close your eyes. You can do anything for a few minutes. Remember, Autumn, mind over matter.”
He heard an unexpected response, a woman’s voice laced with desperation and horror. He couldn’t make out what she yelled, but he connected deeply with the primal core of her voice. It rose from deep inside her shattered heart, filled with pain and confusion, and right now that was the language he was speaking.
but instead of being available to those who loved him, he was absent when it mattered most
It’s amazing how the little things seem to slip away when your life turns upside down. When I read a few pages back in this journal I realized how trivial my worries were. How silly it was to write about when
I never imagined food would lose its taste and colors could actually bleed into each other. I knew Charlie was part of me, but I didn’t realize he was all the good
parts, all the exciting, sexy, logical parts of me. I’ve heard people say they felt empty before, and I thought I understood what they meant. I thought they were using a metaphor and that truly feeling empty wasn’t possible. Now I know exactly what they meant, the sensation is as tangible a feeling as hunger, exhaustion, or acute pain.
I lingered maybe a moment too long, causing him to ask that familiar question, “What’s wrong?” I replied, “Nothing dear,” as I often did to that question, but this time, unlike most other times, it was the truth. In that moment, there was nothing wrong with the world.
Donna had lost her value as a mother, a wife, and a person. The benchmarks by which she had always measured herself had dissolved. Her life had become a car
wreck, or at least the carnage of one.
The currency by which she once calculated her worth had become obsolete and meaningless.
These were the cries of a completely broken woman drowning in loneliness.
Some pill is not going to fix my broken life.
blow. Her mind screamed, I left you that box because you have given me everything else of hers and seem to want nothing to remember her by. Why must I house everything my daughter ever touched, so you can continue on with your life as though none of this happened? You're scrubbing your hands free of Ray's memory, the way
you scrub before an operation to rid yourself of germs.
“I try to do the right thing, but it’s hard. People just seem to expect me to screw up, and I keep proving them right.”
“You know, people just look at me and see a worthless punk, so it’s easier to just be a punk. They see a screw-up, so here I am screwing up. No one cares what happens to me; they just want something to talk about. They want someone who is worse off than them, so when they lay down at night they can sleep well. Every doctor, every grief counselor, every foster parent,” he counted them out on his fingers. “They just want to know there is someone out there more fucked up than they are.”
“I guess that’s really what drove me to take Jamie in. I was hurting and lonely, and so was he. If life were a TV movie, this would have all worked out perfectly by now. Unfortunately, I stayed sad, he started drinking, and I’m not sure either one of us is any better off.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your wife, and I’m even sorrier to hear that the sadness hasn’t subsided. I’m not sure I can be in this state too much longer. I thought it would get better with time, like everyone kept insisting it would, but at least you’re being honest with me.”
“Grief is like a paper cut or a toothache of emotion. It’s dull but constant. It’s relentless. Maybe you can take something to help the ache, but you know it’s there waiting for you when all the medication and distractions have disappeared. When the room is quiet and the lights are off, it’s just you and your grief.”
“What I hate is that people don’t get it. If someone thinks there should be a time limit to feeling like this, all that tells me is they’ve never had to struggle with it themselves. It’s not just some intangible state of being. I can taste it; it tastes metallic and sour, and it makes everything I used to eat feel like sand in my mouth. I can see it too. It’s murky water and windless hot days. Everything I had, knew, or believed died in that car, and I’m just some half-human, half-zombie, waiting for something to change.”
“I will never stop loving my wife and wishing every day she were back. But it’s exhausting to love someone who can’t hear about my day or make fun of my terrible taste in movies.”
“We met half an hour ago and here we are, bleeding hearts with tears in our eyes.
There was a time in her life she’d have believed doing the best you could was a cop-out. But as her life had spiraled and something as
simple as driving her own car became impossible, she was far more willing to accept people’s limitations.
Lonely felt good most of the time when it was a choice, but at what point would she regret creating complete solitude?
“We lose people Noah; you know that. It happens every day here. We can’t save them all.”
“Yes, I just got this strange text message. It says it’s from no sender.” She started tapping her phone screen trying to investigate further. “It says, I’m so sorry for the pain I caused.”
The moment he stepped into the house he knew the walls would come crashing in around him. If he immersed himself in the place that held all his yesterdays with Rayanne, it would be over. There would be no heading back to work because he’d have gone mad. He grabbed a bottle of pills from his pocket and quickly downed three of them. It was two too many, but he was desperate.
It’s startling how you can miss
what’s going on around you when you let your dammed up emotions...
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“It’s not right. Women use their journals to process things. They bare their souls in them with the promise that what they say won’t be read out
of context. As tempting as it is, I know reading her highest highs and lowest lows wouldn’t bring me any peace.”
lines. That rejection from Autumn had pushed Donna to this place she was now existing in. Every single hand she’d reached out had been slapped away. Her help wasn’t needed, and to a woman like Donna that left her with no identity. She’d been super mom. She’d been a
confidant to so many. A healer. A listener. She could console. What she couldn’t do was nothing. Because if she was doing nothing she was, by default, nothing herself.
“That no two people feel the same way in grief. If I were looking for someone who could look me in the eye and tell me they understood, I’d be looking the rest of my life. I lost my daughter that night. Sure other people have lost their children, but like Jamie said, grief is personal. There is no way to truly understand how someone else feels. But he gave me some good advice as well, maybe just trying to let me down easy.”
“You can pretend to be anyone you want, and most people will fall for it.”
“All I’m saying is this guy can walk around making people think he’s all fine or whatever, but you can’t be completely off the rails and think no one will notice. If the dude’s on drugs, of course he gonna get caught. That’s why I don’t bother trying to be anything I’m not. I drink, I get messed up, and I say shit no one wants to hear. But I’m not trying to fool anyone.”
Life was messy. Things were confusing, and every day something hurt, either physically or deep in her heart. But she had to admit, chocolate and whipped cream could, for a split second, heal it all.
Rayanne made his life work, and living without her was like running an engine without oil. Everything was grinding to a halt, and irreparable damage was being done with each second that ticked by.
But maybe loving someone as well as he could was not the same as loving them enough. Maybe his best was still a pale comparison to the way other husbands treated their wives.
She was like a bucket with a tiny crack, her hopes and dreams seeping out a little at a time until she was empty.
Her life had great potential and instead, little by little, he stole it away by making his priorities far superior to her desires.
He was a wrecking ball, and it was time to cut the chain before he hurt anyone else.
“This hurts,” Noah admitted and leaned forward into Autumn’s arms. “I’m in this storm, wind and rain pelting my body all day long. I just want it to stop.” “Storms always stop eventually.” Autumn tried to assure him, squeezing him as tight as her arms would allow. “They pass; they get weaker. Maybe it’s always going to rain on us, but some days it won’t be so hard.”
Travis reached a hand out to lift her, but she gave a slight shake of her head to wave him off. She wasn’t letting him go. If he wanted to sit here all night and ache, she’d be right there to do the same. Because they’d both lost everything right in this spot at the very same moment. And if he were in the storm right now, then she’d sit in the rain with him.
“You’ll make it through the storm,” he said, nodding his head. “You have a couple of umbrellas.”
“As a matter of fact, she looked me dead in the eyes and told me you were her Paris. No part of the world, no famous landmark or old café would ever compare to how you made her feel.
“One day at a time,” she whispered as she closed the bedroom door and laced her fingers with his. “The storm isn’t over, but at least every now and then we can see the sun. Even if it’s just long enough to remind us it’s still there.” She lost her breath for a moment as his arm wrapped around her shoulder. It reminded her what it felt like to belong to someone. “I don’t mind the rain,” Travis said quietly, “as long as I’m in good company.”
