Through The Shadows

Through The Shadows 1

     Shadows of my darkened past were an aura all around me and I was stuck in between the darkness and the light. You see no one told me what to expect during my senior year of high school. But I was very unprepared for the events that took place one stormy, summer night. I lost not only my best friend that night, but also myself. 2

It was the end of summer and the beginning of my Senior year. All day it had been raining and my best friend Steph and I were stranded in the middle of nowhere because my little "piece of junk" car decided to give out. When we had given up all hope of being rescued, some guys from the high school recognized us and offered us a ride. Steph and I knew they had been drinking, but we were cold, wet, and hungry, so we got in the car anyways. A mile down the road the driver ran head on into a semi. 3

I woke up to the sound of sirens and the "jaws of life" eating away the car. I looked around Steph and begin calling out her name, and asking the paramedic where she was, but he ignored me and continued incessantly with his work. I began to cry then, knowing that something was awfully wrong, pain shot through my body and my heart begin to pulsate. I closed my eyes and again slipped into unconsciousness, but I remember the cochineal color on the seat beside me, where Steph once had been. 4

I did not wake again until I was in the hospital. I awoke to my mother's voice, "Wake up Eve, wake up." I opened my eyes and tried to speak, but my throat was too dry, and when I tried to move pain raced through my body. When finally realizing my surroundings I cried again, because the previous night came flooding back to mind.The headlights of a truck, the horn honks, the car spinning, the screams, the arabesque patterns of the ambulance lights through the soaking rain, and the fact that Steph was dead. Steph was dead. Even before my mother told me, I knew that my best friend, the girl I grew up with was gone; she had perished from the face of this earth. Everyone in the car that night died but me. Why was I chosen to live with the memory of that crash forever? 5

I came out of the crash with only a bruised right arm, and a broken left leg. I started school the next week and life carried on, but I was different. I became like a reprobate stuck in a prison. The prison of my mind and the memories of that crash; I shut out everyone and went throughout my studies alone. Everyone offered his or her condolences, but I acted as if everything was fine. I felt myself dying inside yet I refused any kind of help. My whole life became darkness, and day-by-day I was losing myself. 6

I was full of languor for a while, my grades begin to drop and soon I turned to sybaritic behaviors to ease the hollow pain inside of me. That was until I met Blair, the first boy who was not seduced by my voluptuous body. He began to usher light back into my life. He was my very own candelabrum, there to guide me inside myself and help me find happiness once more. 7

Blair and I began dating six months after the crash. He became my whole world. Before I met him I never wanted to wake up, but I begin waking each day just to know I'd see his face. He understood me, understood my pain. He too had lost someone the same day I lost Steph. His father was a truck driver who died in a head on collision. Day-after-day we helped each other cope, and I was beginning to fall in love with him. The old Eve was slowly returning. 8

My world of morose, lonely days quickly faded away. With Blair my cold insides began to melt like the rising of quicksilver in a thermometer. When I spoke with him it was like we'd created our own language, a vernacular one, native to only our tongues. It was like we knew one another our whole lives. 9

On Valentines Day, the six-month anniversary of the crash, I asked Blair to come with me to put flowers on the roadside where Steph died. I needed him there because he was the only person who understood my loss. After our date that night we bought flowers and agreed to put them on his father's and Steph's designated spots on the roadsides where they died. But I wasn't ready for him to reveal the fact that his father was the driver of the semi the car ran into that night. 10

For forever in a moment I was lost inside. Why hadn't he told me? The truth ran through me like bouillon fresh out the pot. I could not stop the hot tears from stinging, and falling down my face. I felt guilty. Had I not been a bad person, had my car not stopped that day, would Blair and I be together right now? Blair took me into his arms and we cried together. He told me he felt guilty in the same way because he was on the phone with his dad, arguing about curfew when the crash occurred. "What if I hadn't been yelling at him, would I have found you Eve?" I begin to ponder his question. Was it fate that brought Blair into my life, and what for? Perhaps it was to show me the appreciation of life. 11

Over the next few days I asked myself over and over again who was I? Of course I was Eve, but since the crash? Since the crash I realized I was not Eve, I was the soul-surviving epitome of the crash, destined to live. It was becoming incipient to me. I survived that crash because the God who dwells beyond the firmament of the heavens had a plan in store for me. Second chances at life, to appreciate the beautiful things, like a great friend. I never really appreciated Steph's company, always dragging her into my picaresque life. But now that she was gone, I wished I'd appreciated her a bit more. 12

Reflecting on my life in the past six months I came to realize that I became a new person. I was shaping and molding into a new Eve. My past behaviours quickly left me and my attitude towards life had changed. Through meeting Blair, who brought me through the muddy, catechu browns of my life's shadows I found a new identity. He helped me through my rough times and helped me through my rebirth. 13

Slowly as the months past after that shocking Valentines Day, Blair and I grew even closer and I began to gain an exculpatory spirit. Slowly sunshine began to macerate the memories of the crash, casting them into the sea at the back of my mind. I finally realized that I lived that day because there was someone who needed me, and I needed him. Blair and I were a match made in heaven, brought together by a tragedy. 14

I may have lost Steph the night of the crash, but I realize now that I did not lose myself. I became a catepillar in its cocoon, a genie in its bottle, until Blair came and set me free. The day I met him was the day I was reborn. On that day alizarin rays from the sun broke through my aura of shadows, shattering them like glass. I had been born again to mold into an appreciative person. Step-by-step I became Eve, the butterfly bursting out of her cocoon to once again find myself. 15