Trigger Warning: The content here includes depictions of real issues that you may be sensitive to or unwilling to address head-on at this time: death, loss, mental illness, and suicide.
If you or anyone you know has experienced thoughts or actions related to mental health crises or suicide, you can contact the National Suicide and Crises Lifeline at 988 or visit The National Alliance on Mental Health at www.nami.org.
Death scratched holes in my heart.
Every day I wake up to a new reality, cold, quiet, and cruel. A piece of me is missing. A piece I'll never get back.
I pushed a sharp exhale up to my ceiling. Sometimes I wished my brain had an off switch. Or my heart had stopped so it wouldn't break with every beat.
Sure, I could've brushed Sam off as mindless, detached sex. But it wasn't, not to me. I hadn't stopped thinking about him. The heat in his eyes, the slick on his skin, his warmth wrapped around me, and the fullness he thrust into me awakened throbs of ache between my legs to tingles of sensitivity.
More than that were the pains in my heart. A different sense of pain nestled between its permanent cracks, and the bitterness of betrayal seeped through my veins like poison. I missed his company, the tiny lift in the corner of his mouth when I teased him, and the unrelenting way he tried to crack open my secrets. I wasn't anyone's problem to fix but if asked to pick a shoulder to cry on, at one point I would've wished for his.
None of these feelings mattered. I was done with Sam Pearson. He was exactly who I always knew he was. A player. A cheat. Being the first guy –fuck, the only guy– I slept with since Nate was insulting.
The mess of words sprawled over my lap offered none of my journaling's usual comforts. Fireworks of ink blots blurred the words one fallen tear after another.
If life is cruel then time is its bitch.
Four weeks early on his third deployment, a different Nathan returned to me. Physically, he walked with a slight limp, but I didn't give a fuck. A feral screech left my throat as I flung myself onto him. Jumping up, I wrapped my arms and legs around his hard body.
Enough months passed that most girls on base had bowling ball bellies. Abby and I weren't that lucky, but we clung to each other during each deployment that removed John and Nathan from our lives and prayed our chance would come.
Once Nate was in my grasp, I couldn't hug him enough, feel him, touch him, kiss him. The rough brush of his uniform rubbed comfort over my arms and neck. His warmth and love were home. My dreams, my hopes, and my prayers were true. It didn't feel real.
"Ladybug," he whispered, burying his nose in my neck. Two arms I missed every night circled me in an embrace that crunched my ribs.
Tears sprung out of my eyes. His shoulders shook where his warmth caged around me. Under his strong embrace, I weakened. "Oh, fuck. You're home. When I got the early call, I thought -"
"Not all of me came back." He set me down and bent over. His hand tugged up the crease of his right pant leg. Inch by inch, he revealed a slender, silver-colored rod below his knee.
"I don't care." My arms choked around him, and I kissed his heart space. He smelled of fatigue, airport layovers, and armpit sweat. I filled every breath with it. "You're back. You're home. Thank fuck you're home."
Pain struck Nathan's beautiful eyes. It grayed out the brightness I missed, darkening them into storm clouds. "John's home too, Ladybug."
I pulled back with a gasp and searched the tarmac. "What? Abby didn't -"
Nate's choked sob stole my words. "Ladybug." Tears dripped down his chiseled cheeks, glistening the hardened skin. It was three shades darker than when he left and leathered from sun exposure. "He's come to rest."
Nathan's return was bittersweet. Of course, we were relieved that our prayers were answered and he came home. The happiness his honorable discharge brought, news that he would never be deployed again, was overshadowed by losing John.
Next to Abby's grief, losing John was hardest on Nathan. He survived after his brother was lost. After the last shovel of soil was cast, the weight of John's casket on his shoulders never left.
The warm, playful light in his eyes was dim and gray. His smiles became rare and replaced with grimaces. My open, smooth-talking husband was withdrawn, moody, and impatient. Like wildfire sparked by lightning, his impatient temper flared easily and angrily.
Civilian life offered Nate little comfort. Ignorant and confused, I offered little comfort.
He experienced migraines and night sweats, thrashing through nightmares so hard that I worried he injured himself, me, or broke the bed. Insomnia became preferable to screaming through the night.
We visited the base's VA doctor, who diagnosed him with PTS. He was prescribed anti-depression medication, Valium, and a mental health management plan. Because Nate was taking Percocet for chronic pain after losing his leg, the VA doctor discussed a massive list of conditions and concerns for us to watch out for.
Nate and I broke down in his office, crying and shaking in each other's arms. His recovery would be slow, four to six weeks.
Our relief was short-lived.
Valium and Percocet.
Nate took his medications on schedule, as directed, no more and no less. His nightmares waned but his headaches and dizzy spells increased. He abstained from alcohol and drugs and worked part-time for his dad's termite company. We ate clean, and we exercised together.
He wasn't an addict... but he slipped further away.
I didn't understand his mood changes. The edge of his anxiety removed was supposed to be a positive, welcomed sign. Calm, quieter moods weren't on the doctor's list of physical trigger warnings and signs. He passed every VA assessment, earning their post-deployment stamp of approval assimilating to civilian life.
Physically, he mentioned headaches, pain in his leg, and reduced energy levels. We pushed through them, slowing life down outside our apartment. Mentally, he battled an internal storm. He grew quiet and disinterested in conversations and me. His post-work showers stretched into thirty, then forty-five minutes.
We slept as two strangers sharing a bed. People bothered him worse than the termites he eradicated while working for his dad.
I wished I had known what those signs meant.
I wished I hadn't blindly trusted the doctor's pills.
I wished I hadn't trusted Nate's, "I'm fine. Just tired."
I wished I hadn't been so fucking ignorant about the mental impact of Nate mixing painkillers and antidepressants.
I wished I had cracked his head open, climbed inside, and seen the storm of hallucinations twisting his thoughts.
I wished I knew the dangers of silence.
Being out of milk prompted a stupid argument.
"Ladybug..." His hand rubbed his forehead. "Let's go to the store tomorrow. I don't want you to get in an accident."
"Huh?" My head tipped to the side. "I'll be fine."
"I can't explain it." He rubbed harder. "I have a bad feeling."
"It's fine. Come with me." I slipped my purse up my shoulder when his hands slammed the wall around me. "Nate?"
"You're not listening!" His voice vibrated off the walls and ceiling, rattling into my bones. The veins in his biceps and forearms raised with his fisted hands. White tips defined his knuckles, and red painted his cheeks.
I rolled my lips in and clutched my purse straps in both hands. With his face and neck flushed with red blotches, he kissed me goodbye with a muttered apology and excuse he was tired.
I promised I would be careful and see him soon. I walked out.
Suffocated by my helplessness, I walked out.
I walked out, and he was gone when I came back.
I walked out.
I failed him. My best friend, my husband, my love, my world.
"And I'll never forgive myself," I whispered.
He dozed off, crumpled over in his old, smelly armchair. We moved off base into a small apartment, and he brought the damn thing with us. Agreeing, I wanted him to be happy.
"Nate?" His chin dipped down, covered in blonde scruff. His eyes were closed and peaceful, and he wasn't moving.
No, he wasn't breathing.
Like the chords in my neck, the room's walls squeezed in. Blackness dotted the perimeter of my vision. I blinked through it, gripping his shoulders. His cheeks were cold.
"Nate!? Oh fuck, no, no, no."
White foam coated the same lips that kissed me before I left. His hand curled around an orange bottle's white cap.
Blinking myself back, tears streamed down my cheeks. I let them flow freely. The memory burned down my throat, pulling the raw cords so tight I couldn't swallow.
Every step forward crippled me because I lost Nate over and over. As reminders and triggers were ripped from my life, I lost more of him. His parents insisted that my last name was the first piece torn off. Moving out of our home was another.
A different method of dealing with grief existed for every person. Amid robotic shock, I hadn't found my coping mechanisms when my mother-in-law's grief bulldozed me.
Patricia Smith mourned the loss of her son by hoarding all his items, holding me responsible for his death, and shunning me from their lives. We'd never gotten along, plastering false smiles behind her belief I wasn't good enough for her son and mine and that no one would ever hold that candle in her eyes.
My voice was dry and cracked, "Nate's chaplain married us after we dated for four months. Pretty rash, but that one less worry he held while away. Nate stole my heart with his first 'Ladybug,' and held it hostage each one after."
"We didn't have much time to make our shared life plans, but we dreamed about the possibilities. He carried my entire heart with him on each deployment..."
I choked on the admission that his loss left me an empty shell. I was a dead sun that collapsed into a black hole.
"He was an honorable man, hardworking, dedicated," I whispered at his no-casket funeral. "He was the best person I knew."
The 'and you didn't deserve him' look was as plain on Mrs. Smith's face as the tears in her red eyes. After Nate's ashes were removed from the church pedestal, she shoved the name-change papers into my hands. My hands trembled so much, I didn't recognize my handwriting.
My brain numb, I turned away from her judgmental glare. His father, a retired Army serviceman himself, offered a sympathetic smile before they turned and removed themselves from my life.
And Sam? I wasn't sure what to think about him. I gave him a part of myself I didn't even know still existed. A part that only Nathan had owned. And I couldn't take it back.
I knew by the tugs at my heart that what I shared with Sam wasn't a rash mistake, but a physical stimulus. But I hadn't felt this unhinged, disconnected sensation since I lost Nate. My body battled against itself. If asked twenty-four hours ago, I was scared shitless at the idea my heart still possessed the ability to have feelings for someone else. As new, fluttery feelings rushed through me, a weighted 'not Nathan' sensation dimmed the excitement.
Now that we... Doesn't matter. Sam's proved what kind of man he truly was.
The rent-free space he occupied in my mind bothered me. I shouldn't have thought about him, like the security of his arms tearing down my walls and making me want him to rebuild them. It wasn't his responsibility to fix my broken pieces of existence. Fuck, I couldn't fix them myself.
The fact I wanted him to? That scared me back to my bed's comfort. Digging deeper through my bullshit, I wasn't upset at Sam. Fuck, I should thank him for the awakening moments, the gut-check reminder that I wasn't supposed to fall for anyone else.
Because yes, the kick in my heart, with a Sam-sized steel-toed boot, was I had feelings for him. That was the only explanation I had for the crippling pain that split my heart in half. It gushed shamelessly during the drive home and, like a pulled-out stitch, the pain returned whenever I thought about him.
A normal person would've brushed these feelings away. But I couldn't find their off-switch. I was better of numb and going through the motions.
The rest of my body knocked on my skull to ask my brain when we could do that again. Warmth flushed into my cheeks whenever I recalled his weight pressing down on me. My clit throbbed itself to the front of a Sam Pearson customer service line, while my left and right breasts shoved over who got his hand and the other his mouth.
I was to blame, not Sam for verifying who I knew he was. Weakened into a pliant, vulnerable state, I no longer recognized myself. The needy moans out my lips, the throbs of beats in my ears, and becoming unhinged were an out-of-body experience, but I craved the hit of silence in my brain as much as the physical euphoria.
The relief from Sam being the only man occupying my mind crashed me into a pit of guilt. Because, if I thought about only Sam, then I wasn't thinking about Nate.
There's no comparison, no measuring stick for pain. Shit just hurts.
Which was why I was better off alone.
No textbook, plan, outline, schedule, or recipe existed for living with grief. Being widowed at twenty-two cursed me to spend most of my life without Nate than with him. Heading toward three years after saying goodbye, the guilt of surviving him crushed me more than losing him. It blurred the line between a spouse's influence and responsibility, festering and twisting lies inside my brain.
Like I could've prevented his suicide.
My if-only's were the most dangerous weapon against my self-improvement progress.
If only I'd gotten help sooner.
If only I honored my wedding vows... love, honor, and cherish, in sickness and in health.
No glory awaited a soldier who lost his off-duty battles, but I promised at his funeral that I would spend the duration of my life remembering him.
The world around me had other ideas. The unfazed world moving forward was cruel. Except for Abby entrenched in her sorrows and Michael tethered to me whether he liked it or not, our friends and family moving forward were cruel.
Poor, poor Abby. She tried, but sometimes I was stuck too deep. Not even her kind words lodged me out of the emotions confining me in bed. I couldn't move forward, not without stepping away from Nate. Part of me didn't want to, and the rest felt I didn't deserve to. Crippling pain was my life sentence.
The days after I left Sam's house blurred together. I wasn't sure when I last showered, but I scrubbed my skin until it was swollen, raw, and pink. Scouring it wasn't enough, so I turned the shower to its hottest setting. Searing needle pricks weren't enough.
Sam. Fuck, why did I have to fall for a fucking cheater?
I glared at the water droplets beading over my forearms. He was under my skin. His influence festered through every cell of my body. His warmth, his touch, fuck he touched all parts of me. The ants-crawling feeling on my skin needed to be gone. I wanted to tear it off with my trashed fingernails.
Only the cocoon of my bed was a tolerable home for my aching limbs. My brain was numb with thoughts of inadequacy and the blame of uncontrollable events crushed my heart and rendered my body heavy, useless, and fatigued. Fuck, breathing was a labored effort.
"Mia." Abby's arms curled warmth around mine, her front hugging my back. "You can't stay here, drowning in guilt forever. And not just because we barely fit in his bed, and I can't remember when you showered last."
I had showered, hadn't I? A hand through my slicked hair suggested otherwise. Tears trickled down my cheek and blotted my pillow. "I can't go out there right now, Abby. It's too fucking hard."
Her hot, humid breath tickled the back of my head. "In what sense?"
Closing my eyes at her making me spell out what a fuck-up I was within my own life, I heaved a sigh. "Keeping a job, losing my senses getting involved with Sam -"
"Stop." Soft rubs on my upper arm eased the taut muscles in my chest. "Mia, you need to cut yourself some slack. You're learning how to live again."
Absent any other worthy response, I grunted.
"Don't grunt that tone at me," she said. "You're learning how to move forward without replacing what's important to remember. That juggling process is hard on your heart, with or without how much pressure expectation you're putting on yourself to move forward."
At my silence, she offered a soft hum. "It's not a snap of the fingers, Mia. Broken hearts like ours need to be self-repaired, stitched with time and patience, so they can learn how to love again."
Time and patience. Time was the cruel bitch who faded the details of my memories and moved life around me forward. Time moved others forward in their lives while mine was destroyed. And patience? We'd never gotten along.
"You're assuming I want to love again." My heart's tendencies were a major reason I held back from reforming emotional connections. I fell hard and fast for Nathan, with my entire heart and soul. The idea I repeated the gut-wrenching process with Mister Loose Dick Immorality rolled nausea in my stomach.
I curled my knees up into my chest. If I could have rammed them through the pain squeezing my heart like a heart attack, then I would have. Asking Abby how to repair my bleeding heart played on the tip of my tongue but I clenched my teeth to contain it.
"Exercise a lot of patience and forgiveness," she whispered, curling her fingers around my wrist and squeezing. "Of yourself. Stop putting too much blame on yourself for Nathan's choice. You know what he'd want if he was in John's position."
"Keep living on."
Upon every deployment, Nate made me promise if I lost him that I would keep living on. Each repeat of the empty words was a dull spoon carved into my heart. Three years later, I wasn't anywhere near that, and honoring his memory wasn't remembering him by the demons he succumbed to.
He wasn't in control of his mental health issues. And I was too ignorant to act on the warning signs. The blurred line of spouse responsibility versus influence refocused my life into bare existence.
I pushed a slow breath out of my pursed lips. Knowing I needed to practice self-care and immerse myself in the world outside my head and doing it were opposites. Yoga's holistic approach of restructuring my mind through meditation, movements, and embracing the philosophies was one tool I'd abandoned. In a jungle of thick, constrictive vines, I carried a swiss army knife instead of a machete.
Be honest.
"I feel guilty for not feeling more guilty," I muttered to the side wall. "And I'm trying hard to not think about Sam, because of his fuckery. How fucked up is that?"
"Not at all." Her voice brought my eyes over my shoulder, where I traced the downturned corners of her mouth. "It wasn't your fault but you need to forgive yourself for Nate's passing. Only then you can make a new beginning and allow yourself to have feelings for Sam. You can love more than one person, Mia."
I gagged on the air I sucked in. "The only feeling I have for Sam is pure disgust. He's nothing but a two-faced, lying cheat."
Her eyes rolled. "It's more and you know it. Otherwise, you wouldn't have let him in."
She was right. Fuck, I hated that she was right. If I felt nothing for Sam then I would've dismissed his existence. I certainly wouldn't have kissed or slept with him. Twice.
The hypocrisy that I denied myself the same happiness I had for Abby moving forward wasn't lost within my mental fog. Thick and viscous, grief and guilt coated my sense of logic with a sludge I didn't understand.
"And you know you need to talk to him. You need to know each other's truths."
She drew a line I wasn't ready to cross. Opening up my heart was painful enough, but opening it up to a cheating manwhore? Reckless and beyond stupid. I felt dirty and cheap. He was thicker than indigo paint, coating my skin until I couldn't scrub it clean.
I cupped my damp cheeks. Fuck, all I did was cry. How long was too long? Some days it felt like never. Widows were older women with decades of loving memories to recall through their last days. Bereavement training on base hadn't prepared me to be a widow after the way Nathan slipped through my fingers.
Not the way I failed him.
"Mia," Michael's voice preceded his heavy steps. "I need to speak to you."
"I'll give you two some space," Abby's whispered words faded behind me.
A beam of sunlight pierced my left eye, a hot poker jabbing into my aimless thoughts. The filtering dust caught its soft glows and flickered golden highlights.
"Close it." I rolled away and groaned at Mister Impatience.
"You've been in here for five days." Michael frowned from where he parted the white curtains. "Abby's given you three heart-expanding speeches. You need to get out."
He was right; Abby came in every night with a tray of food and kind words about how moving forward didn't mean leaving Nate behind. That she knew the guilt weighing down my heart. That the very same heart was capable of loving more than one person.
I didn't have the heart to tell her that mine was shattered by the man behind Sam's image. Not the media darling but the image he presented to me, a kind, patient, forgiving loyal person. She stopped when I called Sam a two-faced, lying cheat and earned myself Michael's blessed presence. With a vampire hiss, I pulled my blankets overhead. "Fuck off."
"There's something you need to see." His phone screen appeared in front of my face.
Sam.
A stock photo blurred his handsome face. I snorted at an article questioning his relationship with Candace, a photo of them with a jagged black line superimposed. 'Trouble in Pearson's Paradise' captioned it.
Sam wasn't the glossed-over image that the media presented. If asked before the party then I would have acknowledged the stability behind the man who put aside his ego, buckled down, and accepted a humbled approach. He stepped out of his comfort zone; when had I ever done that? He wouldn't ever be confused for a yogi, but he was a hard-working man.
Now? Sam was just another player-athlete who took whatever the fuck he wanted without a care about anyone else's feelings. And I was a fucking fool for falling for it.
Buried under shame and three-day-old sweats, my body twitched with reminders of his touch. But heated throbs between my legs and electricity buzzing in my veins weren't enough. Knowing he experienced the same physical... experiences with his staff sickened me to the point no meals stayed down.
Ashley was married, for fuck's sake. And Simone blue-balled Jer, but even I knew he drooled over her. Sam wasn't only a cheat but also a shitty friend and shady, unethical employer. "Why the fuck are you showing me this?" I shoved the phone back. "As I told Abby, I'm done with that lying, cheating -"
"He's not a liar, and he's never cheated." Michael flipped through the rest of his screens, charity PR coverage. "Has you seen him with anyone since Candace?"
"Don't know." Michael knew that personal level of detail sickened me as much as the visual images my mind cooked up of Sam being with other women. "Don't care."
"You should -"
"Michael!" Frizzy strands fell across my forehead with the air exposure from him yanking my blankets off, blurring my annoying brother's smirk. "I know what's being covered up! He doesn't need to go out in public with other women while secretively fucking -"
"Do I need to send you a copy of the accident's NDA or copies from Sam's home security system?" His eyes twinkled behind his glasses and fuck, I wanted to punch him in the nose for it. "You two are shit at talking, and I'd normally tell you to ask Sam, but there's something else you should see."
This was not the time for Michael's superior-brother mode. I flipped past his bookmarked Sam triumphs to a local real estate page. What he intended for my eyes crippled my heart. Tears blurred the address I could drive to blindfolded, and the screen shook in my hand. "No."
Keys jingled and the press of cool metal met my palm. "Go see for yourself."
Dust kicked up over the hood. The road bumped its tires, jostling my hips. Loud beats deafened my ears as I drove closer. I chewed my index finger's nail until it was raw and bled.
Slamming the door behind me, all the comfort my go-to spot for pulling myself out of bed greeted me in a bittersweet slap to the face. The hard dirt under my boots, the soft shrills of birds, and the warm, dry breeze tickling my cheeks - none of it mattered.
Not anymore.
The white fence's condition worsened the more I visited. Paint peeled in tendrils and exposed the raw wood to the elements. I drew a breath through my nose. Four letters stared back.
No.
An invisible knife stabbed my heart. It crumpled with another piece of Nate torn away. The last and biggest piece would be removed from my life. This fucking sucked.
The sign was crooked. The realtor slapped it up, relieved to be rid of the burdensome property after three years. While the property embedded itself deep in my memories, tethering my heart to its undisturbed presence, I had no claim here.
Three years of weeds grew wilder. Their tops snaked through the white fence and narrowed the entrance road. But the rest remained the same - a voluminous sky that offered vast exposure to air gusts, green-topped trees, and chattering bird conversations.
I closed my eyes under a weighted sense of finality. It permeated my skin beneath the sun's searing heat and filled my limbs with lead. I slumped and rounded my shoulders, bowing my head until my chin tipped into my chest. Hot tears beaded over the rims of my eyes, tickling on their downward escape.
"We're gonna grow old here someday, Ladybug."
"No." The whispered word crushed my heart. An invisible limb was cleaved off my body, another connection to Nathan severed by the cruelty of life's forward momentum. Streams of tears rolled over my cheeks. "We're not."
Between the rush of blood in my ears and the breeze tugging my hair, I almost missed another voice creeping into my mind.
"You're trespassing, Darlin'."