Page 13 of Where We Call Home

I wanted to punch the air, frustrated at myself. at the years I’d wasted being blinded by Jess, not seeing things clearly until it was too late.

Loyalty had never been something I joked about.

When Jess left, it shattered something in me. I shut down. Bottled everything up so tight I refused to feel it.

That’s what therapy uncovered—the way I’d buried my emotions, pretending they didn’t exist.

In the year and a half since she walked away, I’d done the work.

Therapy. Medication. Letting myself be vulnerable again.

It wasn’t easy. But it made me better.

Seeing Theo felt like a jolt of electricity. Like a spark reigniting something I thought had died long ago. For the first time in ages, I feltalive. Like I was ready to step back into the world, to open myself up to something new.

But her?

She was slipping away.

I saw it in the way she pulled back from the group, the way she sat off to the side when she did show up. I recognized that kind of loneliness. Hell, because I lived it. I knew what it was like todrownin your own solitude.

If I could use my own experiences to help someone else out of it, I would.

I was feeling reflective tonight, thinking about all I’d worked on and past in the time since Jess left.

I putmydreams on hold to make her happy. I was young. In love. Stupidly hopeful. I gave up a chance to play college football—maybe even go pro—because she didn’t want me moving across the country without her.

And then she left anyway.

Standing on her porch that night, watching her walk away, was one of the lowest moments of my life.

The doubts had crept in and taken root.

Was I the problem? Was I not enough?

The spiral came fast and hard.

If someone who’d been with me foryearsdidn’t love me enough to stay, why the hell would anyone else?

The weight of it all dragged me under, drowning me in a bottle at twenty-four, hiding my struggles behind easy smiles and long hours at the ranch.

I still showed up. Still worked my ass off.

But I barely saw my friends.

The joy I used to feel?Gone.

I’d retreated so deep into my own mind that crawling out seemed impossible.

Then came my version of rock bottom. A run-in with a friend. Too much Jack. A night that could’ve gone way worse than it did.

And in the raw, ugly aftermath, I sat awake for hours, scouring the internet for help.

I couldn’t keep going like that.

I missed the man I used to be—the one who feltalive.

That’s how I found Jenny, my therapist.

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