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I wasn’t abused. I didn’t grow up in a household like that. So, my life as a child realistically could have been worse than it was, but it wasn’t good. I was envious of what other kids had. The families, the good lives where they never had to want for anything. The childhoods that weren’t riddled with drugs and violence, crime and prostitution happening right in front of my young eyes.
That’s what led me to hate Ainsley. She had everything that I wanted when I was a kid. It was the life that I longed for and she was taking advantage of it. She took everything that she had for granted. But all of those thoughts were before I truly got to know her. You never know what is going on in someone else’s life behind closed doors until you’re behind that door too.
To the outside world, it looked like she had everything together. Like she could never want for anything. She had the entire world at her fingertips, with everything at her disposal. And maybe she did, but it was only to a certain extent. Her home life wasn’t as good as it seemed to everyone that was looking in from the outside.
She struggled with her own demons, her own mental health issues. And on top of that, even though her parents were married and living under the same roof, she still had an absent father. He was never present for shit in her life. He was never around and she knew about his indiscretions that her mom didn’t know about. He was having affairs left and right, but she couldn’t tell her mom about it. She was too drunk most of the time to even have a conversation about it.
Ainsley was taking on the weight of everyone else’s problems on her shoulders. She left no room to deal with her own problems and inside, it was tearing her apart. It was dragging her into the deep depths of depression and the only way that she knew how to escape them were drugs. She found a solace in getting fucked up. It was her way of avoiding the pain that she was dealing with internally.
After I saw the real her—her real life behind that all American family facade—then I was able to see that my hatred for her was unwarranted. She didn’t deserve the way that I treated her at first. She didn’t deserve my cruelty, but I gave it to her anyway because I felt like she needed to be punished for taking everything for granted.
In reality she wasn’t taking it for granted. She was just trying to deal with everything that was going on internally and externally. She was struggling with her own demons and I was making her pay for something that was beyond her control.
I fell for her, and I fell fucking hard.
We both fell into a vicious cycle of drugs and getting lost in each other. We were never good for each other, but we were what each other needed. And I don’t believe that it was just in that moment. We’re connected, tethered together by an invisible thread for life.
There’s no way that I can escape her. Even if things don’t ever work out with us in the future—especially after all of the bullshit that we’ve been through—there’s no one else for me. Ainsley was it for me. And I would spend the rest of my life loving her memory more than loving someone else, wishing that they were her.
I came into her life for a reason. It went against my beliefs. There was a reason behind everything that happened between us. The drugs, the fights that I got in. There was a chain of events that unfolded, that all cascaded into the situation that we got ourselves in.
I never meant to crash that car that night. Hurting Ainsley was the last thing that I wanted to do to her, especially after all of the pain that I already added to the hurt she was feeling before I entered her life. I caused so much goddamn pain in her life and none of it was really worth it in the end.
She believed the lies that I fed her. I sent her away, back home to get help and it didn’t even work. She ended up back in the same position, with a needle in her arm and the poison coursing through her veins. I can’t help but look back at that decision I made and question all of the what ifs.
What if I never would have sent her home? What if I wouldn’t have lied to her? Would I have actually been able to help her? Could I have tried a little harder to get her the help that she needed? Could I have tried harder and helped her myself?
I never pushed the issue hard enough. I expressed my concerns with her and how deep she was in her addiction, but I never fully addressed it with her. Sure, we had conversations about it, but I wasn’t adamant enough. If anything, I only added to the problem because I kept trying to outrun my demons by using too.
If I would have pushed harder, if I wouldn’t have enabled her, maybe I could have helped her instead. Looking back now, it seems like sending her home was the worst thing that I could have possibly done. I don’t know if the outpatient program even helped her at all. I hope that she learned some coping mechanisms from it, but it doesn’t seem that way since she went running back to dope the second that she was triggered by Jude.
She was never actually clean when she was in that program.
I should have dropped her ass off at a rehab when I first wanted to. It was an empty threat at the time because I never actually planned on sending her away like that. I know Ainsley better than she knows herself. She needed to want it for herself too. And at the time, going to rehab was the last thing on her mind.
It would have made her hate me worse than she did when I sent her home with her mom.
There’s so many fucking what ifs and after spending as much time locked up, I’ve had nothing to do but think.
After the accident, they did a brief exam in the field and deemed that I didn’t have any injuries that needed to be treated. They didn’t even bother taking me to the hospital. It’s not that it would have mattered anyway. I was leaving in cuffs from the scene of the accident, whether it was in a cop car or in an ambulance.
They found the drugs instantly. After the impact of the crash, everything was on full display. They didn’t even have to search because I didn’t have anything hiding in the car. All of it was Ainsley’s. I didn’t have anything on me and I wasn’t shooting dope.
I took the fall for her, because how the hell could I not? If either of us was getting locked up, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her. I took the fall for it all and after the toxicology report came back showing opiates in my system, it was a wrap. They had everything that they needed to pin it all on me.
I plead guilty to all of the charges. I ended up getting locked up for a year. And fuck, it has been the longest year of my entire life.
I haven’t heard her voice since that night. The look on her face is cemented in my mind, as she searched frantically for me in the darkness of the night while strapped to the stretcher. There was so much emotion, so much panic in her voice as she called out for me.
I’ve spent the past year replaying that night in my mind every fucking minute of every day. I can still hear the sound of her voice. The look of defeat on her face when I didn’t respond. The cop was a fucking asshole. I wasn’t taking any chances and making the situation any worse by calling out to her.
I was already fucked.
Raina came and visited me occasionally. I don’t know why she did it, especially after everything that I put their family through. She knew the truth, that it was truly an accident. She knew that the drugs were Ainsley’s but she let me take the fall because she knew that it was what needed to be done.
After the accident, Ainsley was fucked up, mentally and physically. Raina kept me updated on all of the work that she was doing in the hospital. They transferred her to a rehab hospital to get better physically. It was Raina’s idea because she didn’t trust her being home, especially with the way things were going for her mentally.
When they discharged her from the rehab hospital, Raina had her directly admitted into a drug and alcohol addiction treatment facility. It was where she needed to be. It was where she could get the true help that she actually needed. They were better equipped to handle her than anywhere else.
