Through Dee came Greg, another thing I wouldn’t have in my life if my parents had survived that wreck. He is another person Dee roped in with her overwhelming personality. She met him when she was dating his cousin, and even though the cousin didn’t last, her friendship with Greg did. She can’t help it. She just has something about her that people want to be around. She has that permanent outlook that everything is right in the world. And lucky for me, he just happened to be close the night she came to save me, even though I don’t remember him showing up with her. By the time she made it to me, I had completely blacked out. The first time I saw him, my initial reaction had been fear; Greg mad is not someone you want to be around. When he saw me step out of the van that day, his reaction scared the shit out of me. Huge, raging mad, and ready to kill. No one was more shocked than I was when the feral giant turned human shield. He was ready to protect me from anything, and that has never changed.
I know I am lucky with the friendships I have with Dee and Greg. They are the only two people I have left in the world. The only two people I know would die before they hurt me. They are my family now—family I sometimes want to hurt, but family nonetheless. It is hard sometimes to deal with all my fuckedupness. I know it isn’t easy for them. When I have a setback, they both have to deal with it right alongside of me. I go and crawl into myself, Dee goes into worried mother mode, and Greg goes into his protective grizzly alpha persona.
Dee and I are close, and we will always be, but Greg and I share a bond of loss and heartache no one else will ever touch. I still remember the look he had in his eye when he told me about his sister. That was the only time I have ever seen his hard self shed a tear. I broke down, clinging to him, mourning his sister, but also feeling the pain the last six years of my life had imbedded in me with the stark, cold knowledge that I could have had a very different ending. That was the day he promised me he wouldn’t let my husband touch me, the day he promised to do everything he could to keep the pain at bay.
I roll back over and stare up at the ceiling, following the fan’s rotations with my eyes, letting the memories of the past come rolling back over me.
I remember when I was as constantly happy as Dee, always looking at the world with rose-colored goggles. I wasn’t the most popular girl in school, but I had a good number of close friends. My childhood was so full of laughter and love; my parents were the things dreams are made of. They were always happy, always smiling, and always full of love. Love for me and love for life. For a parent-child relationship, ours wasn’t the most conventional. I could go to them with anything and they never cast judgment or scorn. Not a day went by that I didn’t feel the joy I had brought into their lives.
I was lucky enough to meet the love of my life young. We had a relationship that reminded me of my parents.’ Always happy, always smiling, and always full of love. I had three of the best young and dumb years in my life with that boy.
I thought I was untouchable, and I thought that our love was unbreakable. Together we could overcome anything that life threw at us. By his side, I was complete.
Axel left for boot camp three days after he graduated from high school, and that, unfortunately, meant he was leaving me behind in the process. I understood this. Hell, I had even rallied behind him. I wanted what would make him happy, and I knew he was setting his own path, proving to the world that he was nothing like his parents, who had cared more about their next big fix than their own son. Axel had been living in and out of foster homes for the better part of his eighteen years, and knowing he had nothing to offer me for a solid future, he did the only thing that made sense to him; he enlisted in the Marines.
Together, with my parents by my side, we dropped him off at the bus station with a promise to reunite and live out all of our dreams when I graduated the next year. That day was the first hard day of my life.
I let a bitter laugh escape my lips when I think back to all those stupid dreams. They are funny things, the dreams of an innocent teen. You never know when you’re planning them that you are planning nightmares instead.
I wasn’t too broken by him leaving. Sure, I was upset, but I knew that he would be back; he would return to me. My parents planned a few trips that summer to keep my mind off missing Axel, at least until I could hear from him again. I was so excited for that day, even knowing it might just be a letter. I couldn’t wait to hear about all the changes he was encountering and how he was dealing with them and without me.
But that day never came. Two weeks after I waved goodbye to my love, my parents were killed in a car accident. I was devastated and heartbroken. Looking back now, I can say that was the start of my downward spiral. I didn’t deal with their deaths well, especially without Axel there to ground me. My parents had both been only children, and my father’s parents had been long gone before I was even born. With no other family left to take over my care, I was shipped off to live with my mom’s parents in North Carolina. Even through all my grief, I still held on to the hope that Axel would be back in my arms again and that he would take all that pain away. I loved my grandparents. Don’t get me wrong. But they were older and just didn’t know how to deal with my pain on top of their own.