Things Happen | ✓

Chapter One: Why me?

There are things in this world that are hard to explain. Things we enjoy, things we hate. Things that are strange, and things that are unexpected. One of those things in life hit me pretty hard.

I just couldn't help but wonder, "Why did it have to be me? Why did this terrible fate choose me out of all the people on planet earth?" This thing nearly killed me. I think it still is. Every day I die a little bit.

It all started one disastrous summer three years ago. It was the summer after eighth grade. A time where my biggest worry was uneven tan lines and surviving my freshman year of high school. It was a time where I didn't give a second thought about the things I had. The things I took for granted. The things that would eventually be ripped away from me, leaving me internally bruised for the rest of my lifetime.

Let me explain. I had parents. Not any parents but possibly the best, most caring parents in the world. My mom and my dad where so in love, even after twenty years. And as much as they loved each other, they loved me more.

I wasn't rich or the most well-liked girl at school, but I had so much to be thankful for. So much that I lost.

We hardly ever went on vacations, but that summer was going to be different. We were driving to Denver to visit my grandparents, where we planned to stay for a few weeks. We were supposed go to a water park and even see a traveling Broadway Production. God, I was so elated. So damn excited.

And then it happened.

It's all so vivid in my mind. We were driving through the mountain pass of the Rocky Mountains when a big semi truck swerved into our lane. Our laughter transformed into deafening screams, only to be replaced with a louder silence.

The glass shattered like rain drops and the car seats coated slick with blood. It was the purest form of agony.

It hurt so bad at first. But then the pain faded into this fear that paralyzed you until you couldn't do anything. I was just numb.

As I bled out helplessly, my seat belt still keeping me strapped in, I watched my parents die. I stared at my father's chest, impaled with a metal rod. I watched the whites of my mother's eyes as she remained still. I felt their blood. My blood. Everywhere.

Then at last, the lingering sound of faint sirens as I lost conciseness and faded into darkness.

It was too late.

When I woke up in the hospital, I remember how confused I was, wondering why I wasn't in my own bed. I remember thinking: Where is mom? Where is dad?

Then the memories of the day before flooded back in my mind. No one needed to tell me. I knew before the doctors came in the room to break the news.

My parents were dead. Gone.

I was the only survivor. Had I been sitting in the front seat, that wouldn't of been the case.

My grandparents took me in, and I lived in Denver with them in their small house. We had the funeral, and then, I had to live again. Or so everyone kept telling me.

I'll spare the rest of the bad parts, and trust me, there were plenty that followed. Not all stories are happy, but everything has potential. If you have the determination, you can achieve a happy ending. Or maybe at least a happy in-between.

But apparently that happy in-between was yet to come.

The following year my grandpa was diagnosed with alztimers disease and he forgot everything. My grandma had tried so hard to care for the both of us, but two years after we lost grandpa to Alzheimer's disease, I lost grandma to old age.