Caught In Your Chaos ✓

Chapter Seventy-Two

Jacob

One Year Earlier

Hatred, a feeling that often develops when there's nothing else left in capacity to manifest the pain, disgust, or anger clawing your soul. It is stronger and more intense than any other emotions that you are capable of harboring. The most devastating truth about life is that no matter how much you try to undo what has been done, you simply can't. There's no way to fix what has already broken - to change what has already been dead and buried.

So you hate, you regret it all. You blame yourself for everything that has happened and could have changed. If only you had avoided that one mistake, that one choice shook everything. It usually starts with regret, slowly turning into your biggest shame, then you start blaming yourself to the point that you left with only anguish.

No amount of compassion can replace that contempt in your heart. No amount of love can replace that hatred you feel for yourself.

"It wasn't your fault," Seb's said that night even though I had robbed him of his most precious treasure. He forgave me, he grew out from what happened, but I couldn't.

Humans are prone to make mistakes that rip our hearts out and turn us into hollow shells. While some replenish over time, others haunt you for an eternity. A part of me got trapped by the ghost of my mistake. The one I lived to suffer forever. That night, that one unforgettable night, three people died.

A stranger.

A friend, Anna.

And me.

I had destroyed everything that was loved or deserved to be loved. My story wasn't one of love- it was of regrets and sins from which I could never save myself.

Where was I?

My body felt lighter than a feather, floating on the surface of the water. Noises not so unfamiliar, probably my painful pleading started up in my ear. There was a pain in every single nerve endings, and my head pounded with the heavy blaring of the horn. I woke up after a week of my coma with a broken leg and neck, fractured ribs, stitched-up forehead, all of which could be healed over time but the shattered soul I had to bear for the rest of my life.

Never before that night, I felt so powerless, hopeless, and soulless. There was no need for me to come out of the coma. Even better, why didn't I die like the rest of them? I was left behind to serve the consequences of my mistakes. A constant misery to suffer every breath I took.

The days that followed were just there to mock at my helplessness. Guilt weighed heavier than the physical pain, even more, when I had lost the person who was my only anchor to happiness. I was indeed a broken person who had lost every hope in love.

"You don't have to worry about anything," my father's faint voice reached my ears as he sat beside my bed. My body was still under the process of healing, while my soul kept drifting between loss and remorse. "I've handled everything. There will be no investigation, no charges on you. Seb and I had made sure of that. We've already lost Anna. We don't wanna lose you too."

I could feel the anguish and hurt in Seb's eyes as they locked with mine. How could he not feel hatred towards me when I could feel nothing more than that within. But my father's word stirred another feeling in me, anger. He stripped me of one thing that could have saved me - my redemption.

He stole the chance of my atonement.

I tried to move my body but felt like weights tied to my limbs and some to my soul. My heart hollowed in my chest, cold and empty.

"You've lost me already," I said, my words strangling my dry throat.

That was the last conversation I had before my therapist had suggested venting out my inner conflict through painting. That was one last hope to save me from me.

Everything would have been still the same if I had done things differently.

If only I had been more responsible.

If only I had convinced Anna otherwise.

If only I had taken her place, she would have been still goofing around with her brother. Seb should never forgive me. He should resent me forever.

My trembling fingers tightened around the paintbrush in my hand as I dipped them into the paint. A bright shade of amber, the color of Anna's eyes, I wanted to paint that sunshine radiance she possessed. But the moment I looked at the canvas, her lifeless eyes stared back at me. All that reeled through my eyes were her disfigured face, the blood, and destruction everywhere, a memory so vivid that everything else seemed so dull. All I could see was red, the color of her blood.

There was no escape for me from that night's memory. One moment I was unhinged of my surroundings, and next, I was conscious of the mayhem that had caught up to us. The moment our car hit the one coming from the front and flipped, I could already visualize my end. Her heart-wrenching scream still echoed in my ear. With every impact, my heart kept shattering a little as she slipped farther from my life and nearer to her death. I kept struggling with my hands and legs, trying desperately to do something, anything to reach out to her, save her, but nothing worked. And then everything stopped, her screams, the pain while my heart still hammered in my chest, my throat burned with the loss of air, and every part of me ached as her lifeless body scalded my soul.

"Don't leave me, Anna!" I mumbled with the life left in me. "Please stay! Come back!"

I was trapped in the car, staring at her mangled, limp body for a while. I hit my forehead hard, but that pain was nothing compared to the metallic smell of blood and death that stabbed my senses. Even if I wanted to, the frame of the car badly twisted for me to get out. I might have dazed a couple of times, but every time my consciousness pulled back, I could only see her dead eyes searing my soul. I wanted never to regain my senses, not when Anna was already far gone from my reach. I was supposed to save her. I had to protect her, but I failed, and no one could save me either.

I waited in the carcass of my regrets, surrounded by death and slipping slowly thankfully to the same end. Until I was stripped of that desired fate and made to believe there was still hope.

Days turned into weeks and then months as I kept losing sight of that silver lining among the big black stormy cloud.

It wasn't just an accident. It was a hurricane that took away anything and everything from me.

There was no escape for me as I kept shredding a piece every single day. No love, forgiveness, compassion, or passion could dissolve the hatred I felt. A burning hatred turned into self-loathing.

I hated myself, but somehow Jake in me found a way to seek redemption.

Pain.

***

So, finally, we know about Jacob's past, and it was one hell of a roller coaster ride.

Let me know what you feel about it.