No Matter What.

Life is… fragile. It’s fickle. One day could be the greatest with a nightmare following fast. You could be soaring high, living carefree one moment, and the next? You’re s**t out of luck or even worse off. There is no living, there is no loving or laughing as those stupid catchphrases say. There’s only surviving and hoping that you make it to the next meal or the next good moment. They’re rare. A breath of air in an otherwise suffocating environment. I don’t know how I had let stupid things like joy cloud me in the past. It’s fleeting. Not worth it in the long run. God, I must sound like such a pessimist. It’s difficult not to. My name is Anna Thompson. Up until last night, I was one of those happy-go-lucky idiots who grinned and said yes and amen to how life rolled, betting on that next “good moment”. That’s all over now, though. My happy days have come to an end. My life has been flipped upside down, chewed up by fate and spat out like a rotten fruit. To end this god-awful rant and just put it simply, here we go. I have lost the love of my life. A man who I was pretty sure was my soul mate. I wish I could say it was something as easy as a car wreck. Something so uncomplicated. Something that wouldn’t have left me racked with guilt, curled up into a little ball on my bed as I sobbed. I wish I could say he had died quickly, but no. No, no, no, fate wasn’t that kind. Instead he had died in order to keep me safe. Some sick f**k broke into our apartment and Xander forced my sleepy being into the bathroom with a cellphone with stern instructions to call the police. I was sluggish. The person on the other end of the call said that help would be there soon. It didn’t come soon enough. I heard glass shatter. Feet scuffled and worry overtook me. I wanted to help Xander – it was terrifying to think that he might have been dealing with a total wacko, but he had told me to stay there with the door locked until he came for me. He only had a baseball bat. Voices raised, it sounded like Xander and another man. Their cursing was accompanied by the sounds of a struggle. My heart beat so fast that I could have sworn it was about to leap from my chest. Gunshots rang out. Three of them. My breath hitched and I froze, straining to hear anything through the bathroom’s door. Heavy footsteps moved closer, slugging across the carpet. Everything happened fast in the next few moments. First, I heard a thunderous boom which I assumed meant the police had finally arrived. Multiple footsteps rushed, a male’s voice yelling at whoever it was to drop their weapon, that they were police. That’s all irrelevant though. They arrested him. I exited the bathroom, ushered along by a small paramedic lady with a soothing voice through the apartment. The sight in the living room made me go ballistic. I had known, somewhere deep within me, that Xander had been shot. That doesn’t mean I was prepared for the actualisation. I wasn’t ready to see his body on the floor with EMS scurrying around him, assessing his wounds and stabilising them in a rush so that he could be transported to a hospital. ... he didn’t even make it to the ambulance. The shots had hit two major arteries. One in his neck. I still can’t get the sound of Xander, choking on his own blood, out of my head. It haunts my dreams: he comes after me, bloodied teeth, bloodied clothes, gurgling from a destroyed voice box. Somehow I always know what he’s saying. “It’s your fault, Anna. You killed me. Shouldn’t have let me go alone.” The scum-bag got charged with breaking-and-entering and second degree murder. He is now serving prison. 15 years to life. That doesn’t ease the burden. It doesn’t feel like justice for how Xander suffered in his final moments. It didn’t rectify the life that was lost... a light in this f****d up, pitch black world. He didn’t deserve to die. Not so violently and definitely not as young as he was. It has been four months since that night. My parents tried begging me to move back in with them, worried over my well-being. I refused their offer. It would only make it worse if they saw how I fared. I quit my job, and haven’t had an appetite for the last week. What’s the point of eating? It will only keep me alive. I don’t deserve to live... hell, I don’t want to f*****g live. I don’t want to feel this any more. It’s all I’m capable of. This raw pain, enough to tear me apart, and then it fades back into numbness. Nothingness. The ticking clock on my wall mocks me with its incessant ticking. It’s just a countdown until I wither away. It’s 3AM. With a defeated sigh my eyes close. I am so, so tired.