Finding Us Again

Most people know that your death was one of my darkest days but what they don’t know is that my heart was breaking long before I lost you.

For so long I thought you died to get us out but I realized today you died so my heart could STOP breaking.

For a year I’ve been telling myself that you would’ve died for Darian 400 times over and that you died for all of us including me. You knew that things were not okay and you knew what it would take to make us free.

I knew you saw me in my darkest moments.

I knew you felt my broken heart.

I knew you could feel the deep parts of me on those late nights where I had no idea how my life could become so far off from my dream plan.

So many times I felt it, and you did too….the very slow and painful deconstruction of me.

I was losing myself and I had no idea how to get out, how to make it stop. The reality is I knew suicide wasn’t even an option because Darian would then be forever destroyed by an abusive father.

The law couldn’t help me.

I couldn’t “just divorce” because Darian wouldn’t be safe.

There was no way out and yet I was slowly dying…and there I was lying on our bed sobbing at how life could go so far from what I dreamed.

That was July 19th, 8pm….about 5 hours before you were killed.

13 months later and I finally saw it. You didn’t just die to save the kids from an abusive father, you died for me.

You would’ve died for ONLY me.

I alone was enough for you to give everything so I could have the chance to be me again.

You saw what my heart was going through long before anyone else knew.

You saw every argument and every fight.

You saw him and his broken heart, you felt it.

You saw the anger and felt the rage.

You knew it all better then anyone else ever could.

You were with me the whole time and it was you that saved me.

You gave your life so my heart could stop breaking. You knew one day even in the darkness, I would start finding the pieces. You knew I would go looking for the me he tried to destroy. And you knew that I would rebuild her. Every piece of my heart now a little different then when it broke, better because of you.

And now as I sit here, I realize you died for the version of me that I haven’t even become yet. The me that’s stronger, and yet tender. The me that carries a grace that I didn’t have before. The me that you knew I would become if given the chance. The me that would rise from the darkness. The me he should’ve fought for but instead almost destroyed.

13 months later I’m slowing finding those pieces. Sometimes I search through the darkness, other times I just get angry…other times I remember you. And I realize, yet again just how much you saved me.

Yes, the past three years destroyed my heart but because of you I have a chance to rebuild.

With every piece I find, every part of my heart I uncover, it all carries a part of you and that’s slowly becoming one of the most beautiful parts of rebuilding, finding you hidden in me….finding us again.

So buddy, here’s to living my life finding us again.

I’ll love you forever.