Never Said Goodbye

People stare as I walk down the street, that’s all they ever do. I nod, say Hello, and am overall nice. It doesn’t make a difference. They think they are better then me. Maybe there are, but at least I am happy just the way I am. I don’t have much, but I have the essentials. What else matters? Have a big flat screen in every room, or a Porsche? No. Life is about the experience not the material things.

I may live out of a tent in the summer and at a shelter during the winter. I have nothing else to live for. I’m not married, never was. I don’t have any family. No one wants me. At least at the shelter, I get to meet new people. Make new friends. And during the summer I do some odd jobs as a landscaper for those people who look down on me. I do a good job so they pay well. I save it up. I save it for the day I can start my ‘life’ again, as my family so put it.

I was in an accident that killed my little brother and sister. My family doesn’t exactly blame me but I know they resent that I lived and how my younger siblings didn’t. I wasn’t ‘right’ in the mind, that’s how my mom put it after the crash. After she found out that I drove down the wrong lane leading to their ultimate demise. I regret every part of that night. I regret being why they died. I wish I did.

“Wishing won’t change the past”, my dad told me. “Moving on is the future. We all miss them. It’s not your fault.” Those are the last words he spoke to me. I ran away after that. I couldn’t handle having their sorrow-filled eyes looking down at me. It was almost eight years ago I heard my dad’s voice the last time.

He was right about something, moving on is the future. I moved past the accident, past their deaths, past the hatred in my mother’s eyes, I moved past being apart of the Willows family. I changed my name the day I turned eighteen. I am now Braedyn Jacobs.