The Day We Fell Again

April 14th, 2015

We were ten days from our one year anniversary. My mind had been shuffling between each negative thought regarding him. Days before, I had asked for some space. I guess he got stir-crazy and decided to show up at my house. I will never forget the feeling of my heart when my nephew runs into the backyard, "HE'S HERE!" My face said it all.

Dad makes a joke like dad always does, "What? Did you two breakup? hahaha.ha.ha. OH. Shit." His laughter softens when he realizes I'm on the verge of tears.

I walk up to his red Jeep parked in the cul-de-sac down past my house. He comes baring sticky notes stating all the reasons he loved me, flowers, and my favorite candy. A sweet gesture, and exactly what every normal girl would want in that moment. Nope not me. I decide to break up with him on the spot. I am a total asshole, I know.

July 4th, 2016

For the past year and five months he and I were on and off. The best way to describe our relationship is picking pedals trying to decide whether, "he loves me, or he loves me not."

I am gonna spare you the details of the on and off stage and skip on to a more intriguing point in the story.

July 4th, 2016. The reason I remember this date is because I wrote a song about it. A song I named,

"I MISS YOU"

(I guess I was pretty blue that 4th of July)

CHORUS:

I miss you

I miss us

I miss the way your skin

felt to touch

I miss the way you used to hug me

I miss the way you used to love me

you've taken my heart

you've torn it apart

but somehow

I still miss you.

Feeling nostalgic and lonely, I decide to pack up all the things we had exchanged the past two years and brought them to his house. Purely looking for an excuse to see him.

Sparks fly, like the always do, and before you know it, we are an item again. Though this time, it's different. The nice boy I knew, was gone. Now he smoked a lot of weed and drank everyday.

I knew something bad was bound to happen eventually.

August 10th, 2016

Lollapalooza. Acid. Lauren.

These are the three things that ruined my summer. For starters, Lollapalooza, a music festival in Chicago filled with EDM, and half-naked hippie chicks. I begged him not to go. Yet I still drove his ass to the airport. He hugged me, kissed me, then reassured me, "None of the girls we're staying with are even attractive."

He has always been willing to do and try things a lot of people would be scared of doing, including acid. Another reason I did not want him going to this festival. Drugs scared me, and I knew if presented to him, he would try them.

Acid was his excuse for the last, shitty event, Lauren.

Me - "So are we going to your mom's house this weekend? I need to know for work."

Him - "Uh, I don't know Emma."

Me - "Okay. Well can you find out? It's kinda important I get my shifts covered sooner instead of later."

Him - "I had sex with someone else."

Just. Like. That. He told me just like that. I was at work. I left to call him and a side of me I didn't know existed rushed to the surface when he answered the phone. I would be screaming at him trying to hurt his feelings one second and the next I'd be crying and asking him "Why?" and "How he could do this to me when he said he loved me?" He was so numb, it was like he didn't give a shit. Unfazed by the pain he put me through. The boy I loved wasn't there anymore. He had turned into a machine that used drugs and alcohol as his gasoline.

I blocked his number. I blocked him on social media. I decided that he did not deserve to know what was going on in my life and I didn't care to know what was going on in his.

We were done.

November 2nd, 2016

Little did I know, that was not gonna be the ending to our story. In the previous months I had moved to Nashville, Tennessee and he had moved to Knoxville to attend The University of Tennessee. For some reason, on this night I was feeling extremely down. I wrote a lot, each song about him. I couldn't seem to stop. It was like for some reason, I was being compelled to sing about him. This lasted pretty much throughout the entire night until I finally fell asleep.

November 3rd, 2016

I woke up the following morning with six missed calls and five text from his Mom.

"Hi Emma. Please call when you get a chance."

"Hey. Can you call?"

"There's been an accident."

"He's gonna be okay. But he wants to talk to you."

"He's been asking for you all morning."

He wanted to warn me before the rumors rushed around our hometown and reached me. He fell off a forty-foot bridge. No, not in a car. Yes, on foot. Yes, he did jump. No, it was not a suicide attempt. Acid is a powerful drug that can make things appear differently than they are in reality. As he went to jump over what he thought was a median dividing a four lane highway, he plummeted to what, statistically, should have been his death.

Hours later the text came rolling in.

"Emma. Did you hear?"

"Are you okay? If there's anything I can do for you let me know."

"Did he jump because of you?"

There was even a rumor going around that he was dead. The most classic case of the game telephone.

He suffered from 21 broken bones. Back, neck, pelvis, tailbone, and heel. He was accompanied by a walker and a family member at all times, given the luxury of sponge baths, and had cute nurses wipe his ass.

As I sat in his hospital bed he said to me, "I always knew I'd do something stupid that would lead you back to me."

November 12th, 2016

When the person you love almost dies, all the shitty things they've done to you seem to fade away. When the reality of being without them forever hits, you forgive easier. Also, when someone goes through a life-changing situation such as, almost dying, they change a lot too.

I had to do things for him that some mothers and wives will never experience. There's something really personal about helping your boyfriend's mom give your boyfriend a sponge bath. This changed each one of us individually, and made us a stronger couple.

A few months before I had moved to Nashville, his mom had moved to a town thirty minutes away from me. This is a crucial part of this story. When he got in his accident he couldn't do anything by himself, or go to college. So he dropped out, and moved to Murfreeboro with his Mom. Leading us right back to each other. We both started out together in Georgia, moved away to different states and cities, and then ended up right back together.

January 29th, 2018

An apartment, two puppies, and a year and three months later and we are still together.

Life works in mysterious ways. Looking back on the past few years, it was all these little moments and puzzle pieces that had to happen to get us where we are now. Him and I had spent so much time trying to make it be the right time for us. When we stopped trying, we were led right back to each other.

What's meant to be will always be.