3:8
The end is just the beginning. But sometimes the beginning feels like the end. It’s hard sometimes to tell the difference, but once you can, your whole life can shine even brighter.
I had a pretty shitty existence when I was growing up. My brother died when he was five, I was only seven. We were swimming in the river by the house and he drowned. Forever after, my parents blamed me. I was the target of my father’s rage and the bane of my mother’s alcoholism. I wanted to run away so many times, but you can only run so far when you’re surrounded by a New Hampshire forest and your worst nightmare is the things that will happen to you if you got caught and brought back home. Luckily, they wanted me gone. I was married off early, to a boy from my school. Living with him meant I didn’t have to take the bus for my senior year and I had a family who loved me. I had a husband who absolutely adored me. It was all about the simple things, right?
The day after graduation, we moved out. It’s not that we didn’t appreciate his family’s support and help, but we wanted to get to civilization, and be as far away from my family as possible. So we ended up in California, Orange County to be exact. We lived right next to the beach. The sand was our backyard. It wasn’t a big beach, or a secluded private beach, just a beach where we planned to raise our kids and be happy. The first thing he did was get a job, California was expensive. The first thing I did was get pregnant, everything got a lot more expensive.
Our little girl was four. It was a Tuesday. Everything was perfect. I went to the store and my husband came home early and took her on a drive up PCH, her favorite thing. They were run off a cliff and straight into the water. I hate to call them kids because I was only a couple years older then, but they weren’t even pretending to be adults and drank on the way to a bonfire. In that instant a piece of me was cut out of my body, my mind, my soul, and thrown into the ocean. I thought it was over, and it almost was a few times when I stood on the rocks of that same cliff and cried as the wind blew me away from the edge.
I tried to move on. I got a job. I made new friends. I found God and prayed everyday. Still, I was broken. I tried but I couldn’t move from my house on the beach. The memory of my husband and daughter haunted my consciousness and my dreams.
One day, the day I almost jumped, a man grabbed me around my waist and pulled me back to his car. I was at the point I didn’t care if I got kidnapped. Instead, he sat me down on the ground and offered me water. He gave me the box of tissues in his car and sat with his arm around me. He didn’t ask why I was about to jump, but I still told him. He took me to dinner and made sure I got home safe. He came over everyday. I didn’t mind his company at all. He was comforting. He wasn’t my first love, but he might’ve been true.
3:11
I couldn’t just let her jump. Whatever was wrong in her life surely wasn’t bad enough to give up; to stop trying. I didn’t know who she was, but I felt like if I didn’t save her, no one would. My car screeched to a halt in the dirt and without bothering to turn off the engine I ran out and wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her to the ground next to me by the passenger door. I don’t think I ever saw so many tears as were on her face that day. She screamed and sobbed as I got water and some tissues from the trunk and didn’t calm down for another half hour. I didn’t really know what to do, the only thing I could think of was to put my arm around her shoulder, so I did. But beyond that I was clueless, how do you talk to someone you find in that situation? I do not know any comforting words. I’ve had a privileged and easy life. I probably couldn’t even begin to understand what she was going through.
But I didn’t need to ask, when her tears had subsided enough that she was breathing regularly again, she told me her story. She told me of her childhood that had been destroyed by an accident. She had climbed a tree over the river to see above the treetops and look and the city skyline far away. Her brother was only 5 and he tried to climb up after her. He fell off the first branch and landed in the river.
For years, her mother drank herself to sleep at night, never really realizing she still had a child alive with her. There were times her mother didn’t notice when she would spend entire days at friends’ houses, only making sure to come home before her father did.
As she got older, her father’s anger that had been bottled up for years, for unknown reasons, for longer than she really understood, was finally released on her. She was restricted to her home except for school and things she went to with her parents.
I think her parents actually tried to beat her to death on more than one occasion; they didn’t want her there anymore. It was her saving grace during her senior year; a boy at her school fell in love with her. Her parents paid for the fastest wedding possible and moved her out, forgetting her like an old and tattered couch.
As soon as they could, they moved across the country, literally going as far as they could, right to the ocean’s edge. They were happy, perfectly happy, for about 5 years. But everything changed when her husband and her daughter went for a drive on the highway. Teenagers, not thinking clearly as they usually do, swerved on the other side of the road and her husband’s car was forced off the road, over the cliff, and into the ocean. She went into a severe depression after that. Who wouldn’t? No matter what she tried to do to help herself, she was stuck in a rut, she was stuck in the past.
I sat there that day, listening to her testimony. She was so sweet, a life like that shouldn’t have happened to someone like her. It was an injustice to humanity that she had been hit so hard. I didn’t know how to comfort a pain like hers. My instincts told me to just be there. I took her to dinner, and when I didn’t take her out, I cooked for her. I bought her gifts, not the kind to kiss up to her, but the kind to help her with what she needed. I spent time with her; just sitting on the couch with her watching movies seemed to help not only her, but me too. I quickly fell in love with her. I didn’t mean to, I don’t even think I wanted to. I didn’t want to break her heart. I never would do it on purpose, but I was afraid it would happen anyways. The more we were together, the more she seemed to heal, and the harder I fell for her. I couldn’t help myself anymore and I married her.
I was surprised that she accepted. I thought she would’ve wanted to back away from any intimacy to remind her of her past, but I was wrong. She had a better house and I moved in.
Life seemed fine but I could tell that her memories of her first love and daughter haunted her everyday. Every time the screen door shut, she’d turn around with these hopeful eyes that I just couldn’t fulfill. Every time the third stair creaked, she sighed a little. And the rocking chair that she nursed her daughter in was forbidden to be sat in.
I loved her, but I couldn’t live in the shadow of her first husband forever. I couldn’t live up to everything he was, or that she said he was, I could only be the best me. After much negotiation, many fights and tears later, we moved from her house. As much as we both loved the beach, she needed to be far from that highway, far from those memories or she would never heal.
It’s been a long hard road, but I can honestly say we’re better now, in everyway and sometimes more than we wanted to be. And I can honestly say that pulling over 10 years ago was the best decision of my life.
The end is just the beginning. But sometimes the beginning feels like the end. It’s hard sometimes to tell the difference, but once you can, your whole life can shine even brighter.
I had a pretty shitty existence when I was growing up. My brother died when he was five, I was only seven. We were swimming in the river by the house and he drowned. Forever after, my parents blamed me. I was the target of my father’s rage and the bane of my mother’s alcoholism. I wanted to run away so many times, but you can only run so far when you’re surrounded by a New Hampshire forest and your worst nightmare is the things that will happen to you if you got caught and brought back home. Luckily, they wanted me gone. I was married off early, to a boy from my school. Living with him meant I didn’t have to take the bus for my senior year and I had a family who loved me. I had a husband who absolutely adored me. It was all about the simple things, right?
The day after graduation, we moved out. It’s not that we didn’t appreciate his family’s support and help, but we wanted to get to civilization, and be as far away from my family as possible. So we ended up in California, Orange County to be exact. We lived right next to the beach. The sand was our backyard. It wasn’t a big beach, or a secluded private beach, just a beach where we planned to raise our kids and be happy. The first thing he did was get a job, California was expensive. The first thing I did was get pregnant, everything got a lot more expensive.
Our little girl was four. It was a Tuesday. Everything was perfect. I went to the store and my husband came home early and took her on a drive up PCH, her favorite thing. They were run off a cliff and straight into the water. I hate to call them kids because I was only a couple years older then, but they weren’t even pretending to be adults and drank on the way to a bonfire. In that instant a piece of me was cut out of my body, my mind, my soul, and thrown into the ocean. I thought it was over, and it almost was a few times when I stood on the rocks of that same cliff and cried as the wind blew me away from the edge.
I tried to move on. I got a job. I made new friends. I found God and prayed everyday. Still, I was broken. I tried but I couldn’t move from my house on the beach. The memory of my husband and daughter haunted my consciousness and my dreams.
One day, the day I almost jumped, a man grabbed me around my waist and pulled me back to his car. I was at the point I didn’t care if I got kidnapped. Instead, he sat me down on the ground and offered me water. He gave me the box of tissues in his car and sat with his arm around me. He didn’t ask why I was about to jump, but I still told him. He took me to dinner and made sure I got home safe. He came over everyday. I didn’t mind his company at all. He was comforting. He wasn’t my first love, but he might’ve been true.
3:11
I couldn’t just let her jump. Whatever was wrong in her life surely wasn’t bad enough to give up; to stop trying. I didn’t know who she was, but I felt like if I didn’t save her, no one would. My car screeched to a halt in the dirt and without bothering to turn off the engine I ran out and wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her to the ground next to me by the passenger door. I don’t think I ever saw so many tears as were on her face that day. She screamed and sobbed as I got water and some tissues from the trunk and didn’t calm down for another half hour. I didn’t really know what to do, the only thing I could think of was to put my arm around her shoulder, so I did. But beyond that I was clueless, how do you talk to someone you find in that situation? I do not know any comforting words. I’ve had a privileged and easy life. I probably couldn’t even begin to understand what she was going through.
But I didn’t need to ask, when her tears had subsided enough that she was breathing regularly again, she told me her story. She told me of her childhood that had been destroyed by an accident. She had climbed a tree over the river to see above the treetops and look and the city skyline far away. Her brother was only 5 and he tried to climb up after her. He fell off the first branch and landed in the river.
For years, her mother drank herself to sleep at night, never really realizing she still had a child alive with her. There were times her mother didn’t notice when she would spend entire days at friends’ houses, only making sure to come home before her father did.
As she got older, her father’s anger that had been bottled up for years, for unknown reasons, for longer than she really understood, was finally released on her. She was restricted to her home except for school and things she went to with her parents.
I think her parents actually tried to beat her to death on more than one occasion; they didn’t want her there anymore. It was her saving grace during her senior year; a boy at her school fell in love with her. Her parents paid for the fastest wedding possible and moved her out, forgetting her like an old and tattered couch.
As soon as they could, they moved across the country, literally going as far as they could, right to the ocean’s edge. They were happy, perfectly happy, for about 5 years. But everything changed when her husband and her daughter went for a drive on the highway. Teenagers, not thinking clearly as they usually do, swerved on the other side of the road and her husband’s car was forced off the road, over the cliff, and into the ocean. She went into a severe depression after that. Who wouldn’t? No matter what she tried to do to help herself, she was stuck in a rut, she was stuck in the past.
I sat there that day, listening to her testimony. She was so sweet, a life like that shouldn’t have happened to someone like her. It was an injustice to humanity that she had been hit so hard. I didn’t know how to comfort a pain like hers. My instincts told me to just be there. I took her to dinner, and when I didn’t take her out, I cooked for her. I bought her gifts, not the kind to kiss up to her, but the kind to help her with what she needed. I spent time with her; just sitting on the couch with her watching movies seemed to help not only her, but me too. I quickly fell in love with her. I didn’t mean to, I don’t even think I wanted to. I didn’t want to break her heart. I never would do it on purpose, but I was afraid it would happen anyways. The more we were together, the more she seemed to heal, and the harder I fell for her. I couldn’t help myself anymore and I married her.
I was surprised that she accepted. I thought she would’ve wanted to back away from any intimacy to remind her of her past, but I was wrong. She had a better house and I moved in.
Life seemed fine but I could tell that her memories of her first love and daughter haunted her everyday. Every time the screen door shut, she’d turn around with these hopeful eyes that I just couldn’t fulfill. Every time the third stair creaked, she sighed a little. And the rocking chair that she nursed her daughter in was forbidden to be sat in.
I loved her, but I couldn’t live in the shadow of her first husband forever. I couldn’t live up to everything he was, or that she said he was, I could only be the best me. After much negotiation, many fights and tears later, we moved from her house. As much as we both loved the beach, she needed to be far from that highway, far from those memories or she would never heal.
It’s been a long hard road, but I can honestly say we’re better now, in everyway and sometimes more than we wanted to be. And I can honestly say that pulling over 10 years ago was the best decision of my life.
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