Dark Paradise.

Prologue.

" Trent!" I screamed as I watched him rapidly shake on the bathroom floor. Saliva accompanied by blood poured from the side of his open mouth. Quickly dialing 911, I held him in my arms. Upon closer inspection, I spotted remnants of a white substance coating his nose.

" 911 what's your emergency? " The operator asked

" P-Please help me! My boyfriend, I think he overdosed on something and he's having a seizure!" I hysterically cried out.

"What's the address ma'am? " The operator asked calmly but with a sense of urgency.

Trent continued to shake in my arms as I frantically gave her our address. I was trying to hold his head up so he didn't choke on his saliva when he just stopped shaking altogether. His chest rose and fell one last time and his body trembled. When I looked down I was met with a blank stare dull. Panicking, I began to shake him, my heart broken sobs echoing throughout our home.

" Trent! Trent! " My screams resonated

Shooting up out of my sleep, I sat up in the middle of my darkened bedroom. My body was damp with sweat and my breathing was rapid. I scooted to the edge of my bed and quickly turned on the lamp resting on my night stand. I sat there numbly staring at the picture of Trent next to it.

For the umpteenth time, I began to feel like my life was falling apart. Tears streamed down my face as the helplessness from that day consumed me once more. Even though it had been a year since Trent passed, everything still felt so surreal, the pain was fresh like an open wound. Day in and day out I coped a mixture of loneliness and guilt. Had this been my fault? Could I have done more to prevent this?

Looking back on it, Drugs weren't something new to Trent when we met in our youth. His days as a kid were shrouded in misfortune. After witnessing his mother being beaten to death by his abusive father, he turned to them in his teens as an escape. He was probably using the worst of them around the time we met. Once I built a close enough relationship with him, I was able to convince him to get help. Following a long road of rehab and therapy, he finally got himself straight. In fact, he was about about two years clean around the time he overdosed... or so I'd thought. I wasn't so sure anymore. I was so ecstatic about him finally getting clean, and us being able to do things the right way, that I was blind to the fact that he was relapsing right before my eyes.

I'll always feel like I could've been more attentive, more vigilant. Everyday is a mental battle. If I had noticed those small signs like the experts at the rehab center told me to look out for, he would've still been here with me. We had plans, and we knew what we wanted out of life together. Now, in the blink of an eye, I had nothing. There's a constant deep pain in my chest after losing someone so important, a gaping hole in my heart. Trent was like my other half and now without him, I feel as though I'll never be whole again. A part of me is gone, and here I am a year later struggling to live with that.