Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
PTSD Warning
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright © 2017 Dyllan Erikson
ISBN-13: 978-1974610815
ISBN-10: 1974610810
All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.
Formatting by Elaine York, Allusion Graphics Publishing & Book Formatting
Please be advised, there are scenes of potentially distressing material surrounding PTSD in this book.
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
PTSD Warning
Acknowledgements
About the Author
~Elli~
The silhouette of his back is breathtaking, everything I adore about my husband in a single dark shadow. With his position facing away from me he doesn’t see the tears that pour from my eyes. The skin on my cheeks feels hot and raw with every tear that silently tracks over them. My bright blue eyes feel dull and achy, no doubt swollen and red. My husband chooses to turn a blind eye to my tears, my anguish and desperation. Just as his back is turned now, he has left me completely alone in our relationship. A figurative shun, a literal hell. I know he doesn’t know me anymore, and I think what hurts the most is that I no longer know him either.
“Garrett, baby please just talk to me. I can help you. I know I can,” my plea whispering across my lips, falling on deaf ears. More tears threatening to blur my vision, only serving to irritate me. Each drop of water making me feel increasingly vulnerable and weak.
He doesn’t turn toward me, my words just hanging in the air between us, he just shakes his head slowly from side to side with the utmost control. This robotic person in front of me is not the man I married. This thing in front of me isn’t my best friend, isn’t the one I vowed to love until death do us part. My heart constricts painfully while I realize some type of death has already parted us.
“G,” I pause, walking toward him. “Please look at me.” To anyone else, the anguish in my voice would be heart breaking, but not to him. He likely doesn’t even recognize it being there at all. I watch his shoulders tense at the use of my nickname for him. Ever so deliberately he turns my way, each small movement making me feel hopeful that he’ll come to me. Each achingly slow inch making me want to believe he might look at me with love again and not this distant coldness that’s become our new normal.
He completes the turn, and I’m left feeling worse than when I couldn’t see his face at all. I see now that I was foolish to hope, foolish to think he would look at me with anything more than contempt. What I wasn’t the slightest bit prepared for was the look of hatred, so cold, so sharp that I feel it carving my heart out. What I see in those grey eyes breaks what’s left of my heart, the pieces shattering on the floor, mimicking shards of broken glass.
“What do you want from me, Elli?” he growls in a tone that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I want to answer him but it’s too hard now. I wanted him to face me and talk to me like we aren’t two strangers living in the same space. But I can’t. I physically can’t. The way he said my name wasn’t loving, wasn’t the way a husband should ever say his wife’s name. It sounded like a curse, something you spit out quickly because if you don’t, it’ll leave a bad taste in your mouth. My silence must piss him off, his back tensing further. But then again, everything I do lately pisses him off.
“ANSWER ME ELLI AVERY, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?” His voice is a shotgun to my heart, filling my chest with lead bullets that leave me open and bleeding. He never talks to me like this, he never yells at me. Who is this man? I wrap my arms around my middle, hoping that if I squeeze myself hard enough I won’t fall apart right there in our bedroom.
I hiccup, “I just, I just want to help you.” The tears clog my throat, they blind me and blur the image of Garrett in front of me, distorting him so I can no longer see the man I love. Was he even here to begin with? My rushing tears reveal a shadowy version of the monster he’s become. I hear his frustrated breath turn from a sigh to a curse and realize I don’t know how to live like this anymore. I look down at my feet, clutching my sides so hard that my fingers ache, the pieces of me slipping through my embrace. His footfalls come closer and it frightens me. I shouldn’t be afraid of him. I wouldn’t have been before, but it’s so different now. I sense his presence before I physically feel his touch. His hands brush against my arms so tenderly, such a contrast to how he was just treating me, that I flinch He runs them up to my neck where he uses the pads of his thumbs to stroke my throat, something he knows used to soothe me while also setting me on fire. His hands on me, his fingers caressing me so gently, it’s too much and I feel myself breaking further. I don’t know how to handle what’s happening right now, hot and cold, back and forth. He leans down pressing his lips against my temple and I completely lose it. The first sob comes out as a hiccup and I let myself go from there, feeling every ounce
of hurt coming from a dark place within. Just the simplicity of his touch unravels every single piece of me.
“I’m so sorry, baby, I don’t know what’s happening to me,” he whispers against my hair, “and that’s why you can’t help me. I…don’t even know how to help me.” His voice slices through me the way he sounds so raw, so broken, so desperate to let me in while not knowing how. He pulls me hard to his chest and I can barely breathe, his scent surrounds me, comforting me while simultaneously terrifying me. What if we can’t get through this? What if he pushes me so far away I never get him back? I wrap my small arms around him and hold on for dear life, feeling like this might be the last time he ever holds me this close.
“Don’t cry, baby, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he whimpers into my hair, his lips peppering kisses over and over. I know in my heart he isn’t okay. I know in my heart that my husband is drifting away from me bit by bit and it’s killing me. It’s killing us. The war inside me is so loud that it drowns out his apologies, they become background noise instead of something tangible I can forgive. So, I do the only thing I can in this moment and hold him close, unable to even think, even hope, even breathe.
He moves us to lie down on the bed, me curling up into his side with his strong arms locked around me. He acts as if I’m the one trying to leave him when it’s the other way around. I force my mind to shut down and focus only on memorizing his touch the way his muscled arms hold me tight into his side. The way his breathing is evening out, a sick façade of calm washing over us. I can feel his shoulders slowly losing their familiar tension, his arms instead flexing around me, keeping me tucked into him, where I used to feel safe and wanted. I miss him. He’s right next to me and I miss him as if he were still in Afghanistan. I let my body finally give into the exhaustion, feeding on his warmth and drift away. The ear resting over Garrett’s heart listens to it beating steady and loud, lulling me into a false sense of security.
I’m having a dream so vivid about the day we married, that I could almost feel the sand on the beach, almost taste the salt in the air from the ocean when suddenly I’m flipped on my back with his hands around my throat. I scrape my nails against his forearms trying to get him to loosen his grip, using my whole body to try and buck him off of me. His eyes are so dark they’re almost black and I know he isn’t with me right now, he’s back there, in Afghanistan, in combat. He presses me further into the mattress, this big man straddling me and slowly choking the life out of me. Pinpricks of tingling start from my fingertips and work slowly up my arms and I know I’m losing this battle. I struggle with everything I have, trying to get him to let up, but my arms feel foreign and heavy, the edges of my vision starting to blur. I barely feel my hands fall from where they were clawing at his arms, I barely recognize the fact that I can’t see him anymore because my vision is so far gone. The only thought I can conjure is that my husband is killing me and he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. I let myself give in to it, feeling almost that if I give up now I don’t have to hurt anymore, I don’t have to pretend. My body starts shutting itself down, the lack of oxygen finally becoming too much for it to take. As I start to drift away from life and a warm light beckons to me from a distance, the air returns. It’s so strange that at first, I forget how to take it in. I start coughing and sputtering, taking in a big lungful of air and feeling my body come crashing back to this reality. This moment where I almost died at the hands of the man who claims to love me. I take in deep breath after deep breath and run my fingers gingerly over the welts his hands left on my throat. It hurts, but not nearly as much as my heart does. .
I can barely see him from where he’s hiding in the shadows of our room but I hear him over my desperate gasping, his voice coming out low and broken, “I’m sorry, baby, I’m so sorry.”
~Elli~
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: For Whatever Reason I am Writing You.
Dear Usmcraider1,
I’m not really sure what to start off with…
But, I guess I’ll take a shot at it.
My name is Elli, pronounced Ellie – it’s Norwegian. I live in a small two story with just me myself and I. Oh, I do have a dog though. Right now it’s just the two of us. We used to be three but now we’re just two.
…what am I doing? This is stupid, I don’t even really know why I’m writing to you. I have no idea who you are or how this is supposed to help me. This is supposed to help me get better.
So far I’m just spouting off random details about myself and it makes it seem like I want this to be personal, which this is just… not supposed to be.
This is me attempting to follow guidance and advice and make myself feel “better,” make myself get over…him.
Well you know what usmcraider1? I don’t need to do that.
I am just fine feeling bitter and empty. Bitter is such a rancid word for what I am, but it’s what they all call me.
They look at me walking around with a blank expression and shake their heads, I’m the girl with the dead husband. I am the girl whose fire went out when he died. I am the outsider, the one who doesn’t try to be normal anymore.
But you know what? I don’t give one single fuck about it, about them.
They didn’t bury the love of their life, they didn’t get handed that rigidly folded American flag. They don’t hear a noise and think it’s their dead husband coming in the front door or moving around the kitchen.
They don’t live with a black hole flexing and gaping inside them.
They can’t comprehend my pain, the anguish that eats at me day after day.
They don’t know what it’s like to not have him here with me.
Not that this has anything to do with you, this has to do with the advice I am being stupid enough to follow.
My best friend, Jen, said reach out to someone who knows what Garrett went through. Reach out to someone who knows what a soldier feels like.
But let me ask you something.
Do you know what a Veteran’s widow feels like?
Do you know what it’s like for that Veteran’s widow to go on living impossibly day after day with the knowledge their husband didn’t want to exist in this world anymore?
Why am I even asking you this?
You’re an absolute stranger, I don’t know you, you don’t know me… but if I erased it now I probably wouldn’t write anything else.
Whatever. I wrote it all out anyway.
I hope all is well as it can be wherever you are.
Stay safe if that’s an option…
-The Veteran’s Widow
My eyes itch, begging me to close them and let them rest but I just can’t.
I click send and shut my MacBook down.
What did I just do? When Jen told me about a pen pal program that connects you with a solider overseas I didn’t want anything to do with it. Her rationale was that talking to someone who is experiencing living and fighting in the war would be able to give me some insight into why my husband came home damaged. She used Google to find a forum where soldiers volunteer their email addresses and people around the world can write to them. Jen chose one email address and pled her case with me. I truly wanted to deny her, most days I don’t want to talk to anyone let alone someone that could potentially remind me of the husband I lost. But in the end, it made sense, this is my last resort to try and move on from this.
Really, what have I to lose?
Nothing, because I’ve already lost that, everything.
Worst case scenario, usmcraider1 trashes the message and I go on being the “bitter” bitch that everyone knows me as.
No harm, no foul right?
Well, really lots of harm no foul.
I’ve been aware of just how damaged I am for a long time.
I’m coming to realize, after all the time that’s passed that’s probably the only thing I can be. Losing my husband to suicide has been without a doubt the most horrific
event in my life. It has changed every fundamental part of me and I fear I’ll never be able to recover.
I lean back into the pillows behind me and let the hurt seep in once again.
God, when will I be okay?
It’s been two years.
730 days.
Two impossible years since Garrett died.
I know better by now then to let myself think about him, but nonetheless, I let the memories consume me and bring me back to ground zero again.
Now, I am no longer the bright-eyed Scandinavian girl on the arm of my ruggedly handsome husband.
Nope, not me.
Now I fully resemble the last little stub of a candle. The one where the stick has burned down to nothing and the remains are channels of melted wax down the sides of a table.
My flame has been suffocated.
During the day I’ve learned how to keep the pain at bay, I try to avoid feeling any kind of emotion. It’s easier to turn it all off than to struggle with filtering them. If I become a robot, going through the motions and ignore feeling anything I can stay safe and guarded from the hurt.
At night is when it becomes unbearable. I can’t sleep because, like some sick clockwork when I close my eyes and let the silence come at me, I relive the scene all over again.
Blood, the metallic tang assaulting my nose.
The rich color of it almost black it’s so concentrated.
His bare feet, his favorite cargo shorts.
So much blood. So much heartache.
I should move, shouldn’t I?
I should run away, find some way to start over.
But how do you start over when your life ended along with his?
I suppose I can just keep breathing even if it feels forced and horrible.
I roll over, pulling his blanket over my shoulders and curl up. If I curl tight enough maybe the shards of my broken heart won’t escape through my chest.
I know I’ll see him in my dreams, I can only pray that I see him as he was before that day.
The day that ended two lives, my husband’s literally and mine psychologically. The day that is seared so deeply in my mind I wonder if I’ll ever escape it.
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