Free Nowhere but Up by Pattie Mallette, with A. J. Gregory Page B

me.” “I’ll change.” “I can’t live without you.” “We’re so good for each other.” “You’re the only one I want.” I was hopelessly defenseless against his cajolery. Of course I would do my part and take him back. I did every time.
    I figured, though, that I needed to be honest with him about what had happened on my weekend away. Better to rekindle our relationship on the right footing rather than under false pretenses. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to get back together with him without being honest.
    Big mistake.
    “If we’re going to do this,” I told Jeremy, “I have to tell you something.” I paused, imagining his response. I knew he obviously wasn’t going to react well. “I slept with someone last weekend.”
    Initially, my ugly confession was met with an unbearable silence from the receiving end of the telephone. It didn’t take long, however, for chaos to break out. As I tried to choke back tears and pleaded with him to calm down, Jeremy went ballistic. All I could hear was pounding fists, heavy objects crashing, and glass shattering.
    I felt terrible. Guilty and ashamed. Especially because his rage was sparked by a foolish choice I made. With the phone still nestled by my ear and the chaotic soundtrack of Jeremy’s fit surrounding me, I got dizzy from all the emotions that swirled in my head.
    Still, Jeremy flipping out wasn’t something out of the ordinary. Neither was the long-winded tirade of insults he threw at me. And I knew at some point, he’d calm down. I’d say I was sorry a million times, he’d throw in a few more digs, and we’d eventually kiss and make up (only to do a repeat a few weeks later).
    But this time things escalated to an all-time high. Jeremy lashed out with a threat to expose my darkest secrets—things I’d shared with him a few weeks earlier in a moment of vulnerability. I’d been certain that sharing the deepest parts of myself would bond us together. Never in a million years did I expect to have that confidence betrayed. But that was exactly what was happening.
    In hindsight, I can see that everything Jeremy said came from a place of deep hurt. I had betrayed him, and he could not see further than a momentary reaction. His words were birthed from pure rage and irrationality, a destructive place both of us knew all too well.
    I know all of that now. But in that moment all I could hear was a threat that cut to the deepest part of my core.
    All I felt was darkness. Pure, utter darkness.
    The phone dropped from my hand almost in slow motion and landed with a thud. Life as I knew it stopped. The world turned black. I couldn’t breathe.
    My hands started shaking in a fit of their own, and all I could hear was the gasps coming from my throat as I struggled for oxygen. As his words echoed in my head, a wave of shame drowned my logic, and in that moment all I could think was, I have to die . And it had to happen now.
    In a matter of minutes, I closed the gap between wanting to die and trying to die. My brain was littered with a frenzy of next steps. I couldn’t shoot myself because I couldn’t get a gun in Canada. I wasn’t sure how many and what kind of pills to take to get the job done. I was afraid of cutting my wrists because it’d take too long for me to bleed out. As I continued to eliminate suicide options to find the best one, I thought of my sister and how she was killed.
    Bingo.
    I walked outside the house and waited for the perfect opportunity. It had to be a truck. A big one. I didn’t want to allow for any miscalculations. I’d time my death perfectly, I thought. I watched as cars whizzed by on my street. Chevy Impala? Too small. Ford Escort? Even smaller. Minivan? Getting there. Then I caught a glimpse of an oncoming box truck. Perfect.
    Adrenaline pumped in my veins like a percussion solo. As the truck got closer, I hightailed it toward the street, running across our square front lawn and the cracked sidewalk where I used to play