Open Letter to a Drunk Driver

To the man who killed my best friend, three years ago today,

Three years ago tonight, you made a choice, like your life was the only one that mattered. You got in your car after drinking way too much (the report said your blood alcohol level was 0.22, three times the legal limit), and you drove the wrong way, and you hit her car head-on and obliterated it.

You died that night, too, so there will never be a trial and you will never answer for what you did.

Three years later, I’m missing my best friend like crazy tonight, so I’m talking to her, and I’m writing to you. The things we never got to tell you in person.

You didn’t know Kameron. You didn’t know she was 25, and had spent that evening at dinner with her boyfriend Ryan, celebrating their anniversary, being super adorable and romantic, planning a future. She was the person who texted me goofy pictures and ridiculous memes, and pictures of her coffee or an especially yummy treat, or just “hi!” with a ton of exclamation points. She remembered everybody’s birthday. She had this laugh that just exploded out of her, totally unapologetic, the kind that made everybody around her smile at it or laugh too.

She was going to do things. She had dreams. She wanted to go to nursing school. She was going to travel. She had this map on her wall with stickers on it, places she wanted to see. Japan. Italy. The Northern Lights in Iceland. She wanted to adopt a dog, and probably name it something ridiculous like Professor Cupcake. She would have married Ryan and they would have had an amazing life together.

Instead, she’s buried in the ground. Because of you.

I can still see her face, laying there in her casket at the funeral home, so wrong-looking and still and frozen, fixed up by the people at the funeral home, who covered up her injuries and tried to make her look peaceful, but only made her look like some wax figure of the person we used to know.

Ryan survived the crash, barely. He spent weeks in the hospital, months in rehab, has scars, and his messed-up leg still hurts him. He keeps a picture of the two of them with huge smiles as the lockscreen photo on his phone. You took so much from him. Love. Happiness. Forever. A life without pain, without a broken heart.

You took my friend, my sister, my person. You took the friend who would have been my maid of honor when I get married. The inside jokes we had are just mine now. I have to watch the movies and shows we loved by myself now, because nobody but her knows or understands why that part made me laugh or cry. You took the aunt my future kids would have had. You took a daughter who texted and called her mom every day, without fail, just to say hi and I love you. You took a sister who was supposed to grow up with her younger brother, tease him and do crazy things like siblings do, and be the fun aunt spoiling his kids whenever he has them. You took a future nurse who would have saved lives, comforted the dying, held the hands of people who were scared, made things better. You took an amazing woman. You took all of that from the world, and the world is darker and colder and smaller because she is not in it.

And for what? Because you were so smashed that you had no idea what you were doing? Because you thought you were okay to drive? Because you had done it before and nothing bad had happened? I will never know what was going through your head that night. You made a choice. You chose to get drunk. You chose to turn your car into a giant weapon pointed at the world, and Kameron paid the price. She didn’t get to choose. We didn’t get to choose. Whatever excuse you might have made doesn't matter. You were stupid, selfish, careless, and cruel.

I am angry when I hear people talk about driving buzzed because “they’re fine”. I am angry when I see Ryan flinch when tires screech. I am angry when I see another news report about somebody who caused a crash, hurt or killed somebody, while “under the influence”. I am angry that people have to live the rest of their lives without the best person they ever knew, because somebody like you made a stupid, arrogant, unforgivable choice.

And you don't even have to live with what you did. You died too, so you’ve never had to sit in a jail cell, or in a courtroom and hear about the lives you destroyed. You’re gone, while the rest of us have to figure out how to keep breathing, how to live life with a giant Kameron-sized hole in it.

Some people say we should forgive you. They say forgiveness is for the living, that holding onto anger poisons us. But they didn't lose their person, their friend, their sibling, their child. They don't wake up on days like today, the anniversary, and feel the weight of three years of absence, and a lifetime of absence yet to come. They don't know what it's like to scream at a grave, at a death certificate, at empty air instead of where you should be in a prison cell.

I hope, wherever you are, you see her face. I hope you see us, our grief, our pain, and our doing things in her name and in her memory to make the world a better place. I hope you have to see what she would have become, all the lives she would have touched, all the good she would have done. I hope you understand that you didn't just end a life. You ended thousands of moments, infinite possibilities for fun and laughter and love. She was magic. She was the best of us. I hope it haunts you.

We miss our Kameron today. We love her.

I hate you for making me have to write this today. I’m talking to her and writing to you and crying. I hope she hears me, and I hope you do too. Here’s all my love, grief, pain, everything I need to say today.

Signed,
Broken Pieces