I wake up in the silence, my eyes opening into the darkness as a deafening void fills every corner of my brain.
The silence is so thick, and it clings dearly to me, making me wonder if I’m still alive, if the world is still turning, or if I’ve just been abandoned by time itself.
I take in a deep breath, slowly letting the air inflate my lungs, and then exhaling it all out immediately.
I'm still breathing, which means I’m still here.
I'm still alive, even though it's just barely.
I lie here in my cell, staring at the cracked ceiling. The walls seem to press in on me, this tiny space making it difficult for me to breathe, even as my thoughts and emotions threaten to suffocate me.
I wait for something, a sign, a siren, an alarm, or any sound, to pull me out of this endless numbness, but nothing comes.
The space remains still, silent, and lonely.
My eyes are heavy, my body feels alien, and even though I've not made an attempt to, I feel like I can’t move an inch.
How much time has passed since that night?
Has it been hours? Days? Weeks? Has it been a much longer time than I can even bear to imagine?
I do not know.
In this place, time has no meaning.
The minutes drag on, stretching into an eternity that I cannot measure, and I just wait.
I wait and hope for something, anything, to change, but nothing ever does.
Every passing second it's me and the singular notion that never stops ringing in my head.
I should’ve been the one that died.
The thought is a constant, gnawing presence.
It haunts my sleep and steals my breath, and I cannot shake it.
Every moment that I spend alive in this prison cell is weighted by the knowledge that she’s gone because of me.
Every time I close my eyes, the memory washes over me like the headlights I never saw coming.
When I sleep, I still hear the screeching of the tyres and the terrible, jarring noise of metal colliding.
I still feel the strange vertigo swirling in the pit of my stomach as I remember the spinning motion of the vehicle that seemed to last forever.
I still feel the shattering impact spreading across my skin.
It's a torturous cycle that repeats itself over and over again, whether I'm asleep or I'm awake.
Yet nothing lingers the most in my mind like her voice.
Her sweet, soft voice, trembling and pleading as it cut through the chaos, begging me to "Please, slow down."
Oh, how I wish I had listened.
I had been drinking again, drinking way too much.
I was wasted and in no shape to drive.
And I don't know if it was my ego or the alcohol in my system, but I somehow managed to delude myself into thinking that I was invincible.
I got behind the wheel, I drove with no fear, and I thrived in the thrill of the speed.
By the time I hit the brakes, it was already too late.
I remember screams, the shattering sensation of the car spinning, the world turning into a blur of darkness.
And then, nothing.
When I woke up, I was battered, bandaged, bruised, and I was all alone, handcuffed to my hospital bed.
Yet, I was alive.
But her… She wasn’t there.
They say that the initial impact of my car with the truck didn’t gave her a chance, and she died immediately.
Every now and then, her voice echoes loudly through my mind, a relentless reminder that I am the reason she never made it back home.
Every minute, every hour, the guilt follows me like a shadow.
It's hard to breathe, and I can’t feel anything but the crushing weight of my actions that night.
The weight of the fact that I killed her.
I killed her.
Me. I did.
Not in some grand, dramatic way, but in the reckless, careless manner of a stupid, drunk, selfish fool who believed he could outrun consequences.
Who believed he was invincible.
I should’ve been the one to die, not her.
But I didn’t, and I’m still here, forced every day to live as a punishment for what I’ve done.
I can't escape the gnawing guilt that claws at my heart every passing moment.
I try to keep myself busy in the limited ways I can.
Lifting weights, reading books, taking long, cold showers– anything to try to numb the ache, but nothing helps.
I don’t speak to any of the other inmates here. I can’t meet any of their gazes. I drift through each day like a dead man, feeling as broken on the outside as I do on the inside.
We had a plan. We had promised each other forever. We had dreamed of a future together, one that was built on love, but I broke that promise. I broke everything, and I ruined it all.
She never deserved me, not even a little bit.
I never told her how much I loved her, not really, not in the way she deserved.
She always tried to pull me out of my shell, to show me that there was more to life.
But I never listened.
I never listened to her, and now she’s gone.
She's gone! I'll never see her again, and it's all my fault.
Every time I close my eyes to try to sleep, I see her face.
I see her big, hazel eyes, full of love, in the moments she would smile at me.
I also see them wide with shock and horror as she pleaded with me again that one last time.
Sometimes, in the dead of night, I think I can still feel her presence around me.
I want to scream, to tear the silence apart and let the world hear the fury and pain that churn inside me, but my throat remains tight and the words are choked in my throat by my guilt and shame.
All that’s left is this piercing, endless ache and the nagging voice in my head that constantly reminds me that I do not deserve to be breathing.
I do not fight it.
I know that I will have to live with it for the remainder of my days in this prison cell and even the remainder of my life.
I remember the day my verdict was passed in court.
The judge gave it, the jury agreed, and yet I know that no sentence will ever be enough for me to pay for what I did.
I could serve a hundred life sentences consecutively, and it still won't pacify the condemnation that's in my soul or fill the hollow space where she used to be.
She doesn't deserve to be six feet under, but I do.
I deserve to rot here. Forever.
I won't ever forget the hatred in her parents’ eyes in the courtroom that day. Their anger, amplified by their cold, unyielding grief.
I was happy that they didn't bother to hide it, and I wanted so desperately to tell them that they could never hate me as much as I hated myself.
I deserved every bit of their resentment.
I didn’t just kill their daughter; I killed the future she was meant to have.
The worst part is that they never liked me in the first place. They always warned her to stay away from me, but she?
She always said she saw the "good" in me, and she tried to convince her parents to do the same.
If only she had listened to them.
I wish you had listened to them.
I wonder how you're doing.
Did you forgive me in the final moments before you died? Or did you die hating me? I wouldn't blame you if you did.
I don't deserve your forgiveness.
I don't deserve any form of redemption.
I wish I was the one who died in your place.
I swear to you that if I had known that you would not be here when I woke up, I would not have survived that night.
I will never forgive myself.
You are gone. Dead.
Permanently.
And there’s nothing left of us, nothing left of you, nothing left to save.
It is not fair that I’m still breathing while you've been silenced forever.
Every breath I take feels like another betrayal of the life we were meant to share.
A life that we would never get to experience.
What do I even do without you?
You always kept me grounded. You saw my demons, my pride and my arrogance, and yet, you loved me still.
You were the only good thing in my life. The only good thing that had ever happened to me.
And I ruined it.
I ruined it, and there's no taking it back.
How do I unbreak what I have broken?
How do I unsay my reckless, spoken words?
How do I unburn the ashes of what we had?
How do I unchain the reactions of my terrible actions?
How do I find any glimmer of hope in this hopelessness?
What even is the point of hoping if every possible future from here on out does not have you in it?
There is none.
I am sorry.
I am so, so sorry.
There is no hope for me anymore, and I must live with it.
I made my choices, and now I have to live with them, the same way you have died because of them.
I accept that.
But please, please, I want you to know this–
I want you to know that I love you and that I will forever love you.
And know that if the day ever comes and there's a chance, a one in a million chance, that I could go back to that night and take back what I did, then I would take the odds with no hesitation.
I would jump at the chance, and I would die in your place.
However, until then, I will remain here, lying alone in this still and lonely silence.
Reliving this train wreck for the rest of my life.
This story was inspired by this beautiful song:
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Realizing how much someone means to us — only when it’s too late — is one of the hardest forms of punishment.
This is so heartbreaking 💔😔