What do you do when your entire world is flipped?
When you think you finally know all the variables only to learn that it was all a lie?
That you’re really nothing.
No one.
For a time I was the son of a powerful and terrifying man with a dark history,
The son of a woman who left me to have a better life.
I learned many things from a sister who was an evil that knew the best.
I admired a brother who was a formidable force.
Most of my life was just endless pain and torment from all sides
It’s all I’ve ever known.
Only to find out it was all a lie.

Can someone explain to me how I could finally start to breathe again.
How I was a better person and I was healing.
How I started to smile again without faking it.
How the nightmares weren’t as frequent.
How everyday was becoming brighter.
How I was getting better.
Only for one girl to say all the right triggers,
To play with my head again.
How could one person cause such pain and now here I am.
This time i don’t even know where to start.

Isn’t it cruel and profoundly interesting that in the end you play your game with others feelings.
That once again you think yourself innocent while  this whole time I was blind.
Things you want your way and if not you destroy that person.
What kind of a monster did I fall in love with.

I don’t think she’ll ever understand,
That throughout every hurt every obstacle every separation and every reunification only for it to be cut short,
I have always loved her for her.
It’ll be two years this coming April 6th that we’ve been completely in each other’s lives and out during times.
It’s no lie that it hasn’t always been perfect or happy,
There’s been dark times and hurtful times.
Yet throughout everything,
I still look at her and love her more everyday.
I’ve watched her stumble and fall.
I’ve watched her pick herself up and still do everything her way,
I’ve watched her grow and become stronger.
I’ve also hurt her,
I’ve disappointed her.
I let her down because I wasn’t ready for anything she needed.
Yet I loved her all throughout.
She wanted stability and love.
She needed a partner,
I was too busy with my head in the clouds and too broken to even try.
I’ve watched her leave, fall in love with someone else.
Very quickly might I add.
Yet here I am still writing about the girl who’s kiss truly is beyond this world and I think about that first kiss we had.
I was a boy, who dreamed of things.
She was a girl, who believed in us.
Now here we are, two years later.
And I have to decide whether or not to let you go…
Because it hurts…
Or hang on and hope.

Life is full of triggers.
Everyday I get sent back to the fire.
Everyday at some point I am back in the fight or flight mode.
Life is dangerous.
Love is dangerous.
Yet I also remember that I started moving when I could’ve stayed frozen in that moment.
I could’ve stayed still and prayed someone else would’ve helped me.
Instead I chose to move, I chose to find a way out.
I chose to pull myself and her out.
I chose to keep going.
Even when everything started to hurt physically, emotionally, mentally.
When the adrenaline started to wear off on that hospital bed and all I could hear was the echoing roaring flames and popping, the explosions.
And the beeping of the heart monitor skyrocketing.
The moment I saw my sister and the look on her face, I collapsed into her arms and she held me.
I broke down like never before,
In that moment I was vulnerable.
Exposed.
Yet all I felt was love and comfort.
Even to this day I call or my sister checks in and I know there’s a reason I moved.
There’s a reason every single doctor, police officer and firefighter kept telling me over and over that I did something.
I saved someone.
I moved quick and I did everything right.
My aunt telling me that she can’t wait to see how I use my “gift” for something good and great.
How everyone always told me before that my ADHD was something annoying or bad or that I will always be a bother.
I learned that it’s helpful.
I processed everything in my head,
Staying in that van and hoping someone else gets us,
Staying and just accepting that this is it.
Or moving.
“Gotta move. Gotta get us out. We gotta go home. How do we get home.”
In the end,
It was terrifying, it still haunts me.
The pictures and videos are nothing compared to how it was.
They don’t show exactly what it was.
The reality was so much worse.

I keep going back to that moment,
Right after we slid into the ditch.
As we literally hung in the balance,
Too much weight on the right side and we’d roll deeper and deeper into the ditch.
It was the moment that was so quiet and still.
Where every part of me shuddered,
Where we both forgot how to breathe.
Dangling as she slammed her foot on the gas pedal,
Causing the grass below the left driver side tire to spark on fire.
In that moment of stillness as the dry grass burned,
Fear.
Don’t move.
Figure something out.
She can’t move.
I can’t move.
Are we going to die?
I can’t stop shaking.
Breathe.
I can’t breathe.
******* we are going to die.
That moment where all the questions and decisions in the world happened,
The left tire blew erupted into flames as I grabbed her shoulder, leaving her towards the left side to stabilize us as much as possible.
I told her to push her feet into that break and not to let up until I tell her to.
Climbing into the back seat breaking the window and climbing out.
Pitch black smoke everywhere I actually lost my directions and couldn’t see the van.
I couldn’t breathe.
After fumbling around like a blind man,
I found the door and had to rip the seat belt off to get her out.
She was frozen so I had to carry her to the other of the road.
That’s when the next moment happened.
The shuddering, the heat of the flames.
The crackling of the fire, the moonlight reflecting on the river.
That’s when I did the most stupidest thing,
I ran back into the fire.