To whoever killed my husband

Dear someone,

It's been 27 days since you took a left turn without paying enough attention and killed my husband. I don't know what exactly happened, I don't really need to know. All I know is that you took that turn, and my husband's life ended.

What you might not realize is that you didn't only take away my husband's life that day. You might think that the only person you killed was Andrew Dearing, age 27, coming back home to his wife after work but that wasn't the only person whose heart stopped that night. I want you to know, that by taking his life away, you took mine too.

I'm Martyna, I'm 26 and I'm the one who is still here but not living, just existing. See, I didn't have the privilege of being declared dead that day. According to everyone else, I'm still alive. Don't be mistaken though, you took my life away just like you took Andrew's.

We have 2 dogs and 2 cats. Today one of the dogs, Morty, got really sick and I've been taking care of him all day. Usually, Andrew would come back from work at 6 PM and take over but he hasn't done that in almost a month. So I'm here, taking care of everyone. Walking the dogs, working, walking the dogs, working.

I used to go out a lot. You know, with my husband. We loved trying out new restaurants or coming back to the ones we loved. We loved going on dates. I mean, we were in our 20ties, why wouldn't we go out on dates? We also loved traveling. We'd have been in London 2 weeks ago. We were going to Costa Rica in February. For our 5th anniversary, we were supposed to renew our vows in Hawaii. Andrew's dream was to go to Japan. My dream was to go to Thailand. We had a lot of dreams, and a lot of plans and we expected a lifetime together to fulfill them.

Then you happened.

You failed to yield and just like that you killed my husband. 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee on West Ox Road. The road I'm forced to pass on a daily basis and the make of the car I have always wanted. Every time I step outside I'm triggered by any motorcycle, any car, and any ambulance passing by. You did it. All of this. Yet, I don't even know your name.

You never reached out to say you're sorry for breaking my heart, for taking my soulmate away. You never reached out to apologize for ending my life. For making me cancel all of our trips. For all the dates we will never have again. For our pets missing their dad. For the kids, we will never have.

You took everything away from me. You took my life. You took my future. You took away my family. The one I had and the one I never got a chance to create. By taking that left turn you killed a 27-year-old man coming back home and you broke his 26-year-old wife who will never know how it is to be loved again.

You ended the most beautiful love story that I could ever dream of. You ended the happiness of two young people who wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. You didn't even give us a chance to get better. You didn't give us a chance to grow up and learn from our mistakes. You killed him just when life actually started getting good for us.

And now it's not. There's no life. There's no life for either of us. One killed by you and one forever broken. Meanwhile, you can't even reach out to say sorry?

Did you ever care enough to find out who he was? That he was an amazing mentor, colleague, son, and brother? That he left so many heartbroken? Do you even care how funny and amazing he was? That he recorded YouTube videos teaching others how to play guitar? That he had friends who just got engaged and were about to have a baby? Did you know he had a wife waiting for him to get home with that stupid Mac and Cheese in the oven? Do you know anything about the person you killed? If you do, you could've fooled me. Because we don't know anything about you.

Do not ever think that you can do anything to make up for what you did. No charity, no money, and no prison sentence will ever give the love of my life back to me. He's gone and you can't do anything about it. You killed him and nothing will ever change that.

I hope one day, you read this letter and realize what you did. You killed someone who was coming back to his wife after a long day. We fought that morning but we were about to make up. I made him dinner. I was waiting for him. He'd hug me and we'd say we were sorry. We never got to though. He died without his last "I love you". You took our last "I love you" away from us and you can't even say you're sorry.

Who the hell do you think you are?

- Andrew's soulmate