I killed an Angel
(Love saved me)
It was June 4th 1997. I had just turned 18. It was a school night and I was studying for finals.
I needed a break so I decided to visit my cousin Melissa.
When I got there Melissa wanted to take me for a ride on the old ATV that her family had just inherited from her uncle. It was beat up and looked like it was falling apart.
She hoped on the bike turning it on with one hand and waving to me with the other. “Come on! lets go. We got time before my mom gets home!”
And off we went, riding across the field in the sunset waving at the cows as we drove buy.
“I love you Melissa,” I yelled with giggles and laughter.
“I love you too,” she exclaimed. I couldn’t see her face of course, but I knew she was smiling from ear to ear.
“Yahoo!!!!” We were shouting and laughing yelling back and forth about how much we loved each other.
The ride back was quieter. As we approached the house, a car pulled into the driveway. Melissa’s cousin Lisa got out of the car, and called: “Come on Melissa it’s time to go to the bonfire.”
I had been having so much fun I didn’t want to stop and the three wheeler was still running.
“It is my turn to give you a ride” I told Melissa.
Hesitant, Melissa looked back at Lisa. “Will be right back” she yelled.
And off we went again on the old country trail, with me at the wheel this time.
Only a few hundred yards onto the trail I suddenly felt a kick in the front of the ATV. It felt as if I had hit a giant rock. But there was no rock. The handle bars slipped out of my hands, and I don’t remember anything else.
I woke up lying in the field, my vision blurry.
Where was I? What was happening?
I tried to stand but I couldn’t. (I later learned that I had a collapsed lung.)
On my hands and knees I crawled towards the sound of people screaming. I could hear the panic in my aunt’s voice: “Is my little girl awake? Is my little girl awake?”
I crawled back to the house. Melissa’s 13 years old brother Jack was sitting by the phone. “I called the ambulance 20 minutes ago,” he told me, “they are still not here”.
Still on the floor He looked down at me and said. “It’s the wheel the stupid wheel.”
“What wheel?” I asked.
“The three wheeler, it’s the front wheel! It broke! I knew there was something wrong with it!”
A sense of urgency kept rising within me, the feeling that something real bad was going on.
When the ambulance finally arrived. Jack ran outside to show them the way to his sister. But it was too late. I had killed my cousin. She was only 17.
Melissa had been everybody’s friend. She always had a smile on her face. She was kind all the time. Melissa was an angel.
As for me. I was a lost soul. Plagued with depression, I rarely smiled. I knew something was wrong with me, I just didn’t know what. I had everything a child needed, yet I had no joy. I wanted the happiness that Melissa had but I just didn’t know how to get it.
Little did I know this accident would be the catalyst to my journey to finding joy, happiness and inner peace.
At that point in my life I had un-diagnosed bipolar disorder with long periods of deep depression. I walked around with a black cloud over my head. I coped with drinking, smoking and partying a lot. Now add the accident. I felt doomed. I moved across country to get away from the people involved and especially from myself. The next year was filled with an abusive relationship and more partying and drinking. During that time I was trying to punish myself. I came from a catholic back ground raised by a generation that did not talk about feelings and used shame and guilt as a form of getting yourself back right with God. That is what I had been taught so that is what I did. Their was no amount of punishment that could remove the shame and guilt I believed I deserved and felt. After all I had just killed someone. I should pay for that. One year into this I woke up with 17 bruises on my body, some the size of a melon, and could barely walk. My boyfriend had beaten me so hard. That is when I had enough. Something had to change and I was the only one that could do it.
The first person who helped me was Suzanne, Melissa’s mother.
Less then a month after her passing we were celebrating what would have been Melissa’s 18th birthday. We stood together looking at Meli’s picture.
“Aunti Suzanne, do you blame me?” I asked.
She wrapped her arms around me and with tears streaming down her face she whispered in my ear “No honey! No! I don’t blame you one bit. I know it isn’t your fault.”
I could tell she meant it. Her words were so real and so sincere. I felt like I could breath again, that I could hang in there one more minute, one more hour, one more day. They allowed me to keep on going especially when the thoughts of taking my own life would come. Her loving words affected me greatly. Even though it was just for a moment, they whispered in my ear for a life time.
My weekend visits to my god mother also kept me alive and gave me hope. She was on her own journey to love and she lived her journey in front of me. She was learning to love herself and her life. Most people when they see someone hurting the first thing they try to do is give them advice or tell them how to change but she never tried to change or fix me. She did not get impatient and oh boy did I spend many nights crying on her sofa. A place where I felt safe as a little bird in a bird’s nest. Un-pressured, heard and free to talk or not. Her love and compassion was like a spiritual pacemaker that gave me a heart beat. It was faint, invisible to the eye but it was there. Her belief in me gave me enough courage to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Approximately six months after my accident, David a kid at my school, was driving and lost control of the wheel. His best friend, in the passenger seat, was killed. I didn’t know David. I just knew who he was. But I knew far too well how he felt, and my heart broke for him.
I hadn’t even liked the guy and he didn’t know I existed. We hung out with the same people but he was a year older than me and we had never spoken to each other.
All that no longer mattered.
We started hanging out. We just spent time together, playing board games. Over time, a friendship of mutual respect bloomed, despite the fact that we had absolutely nothing in common besides guilt, shame and a broken soul.
A bridge connected us on a level so deep that no words could describe it. Our pain. Although we never spoke about the accidents, we always knew how the other one felt and that was healing in itself.
For many years after the accident, I carried a truck load of guilt. I had no self esteem or love for myself, but I did have a slight amount of hope, and a faint burning desire to learn how to enjoy my life. I didn’t love myself enough to do this for myself, but I did love Meli and I could do it for her. So I did.
It was difficult at first. So many times, I wanted to give up and just plain pull the trigger and I came close. But I would tell myself, “Meli would want me to be happy.” and I would remember Suzanne’s words. “No, honey! I don’t blame you one bit.”
Over and over again, for years, those few but powerful words helped me move forward where valleys were many and peaks were few.
I cannot give you the exact date when I looked back and realized that I was free from guilt, but I can tell you that I no longer feel guilty.
Over twenty years have passed since the day Meli died. My life is now filled with inner peace and beautiful moments of joy. I smile often and suicidal thoughts are a thing of the past. When I think of Meli, I no longer tell myself,” She would want me to be happy.” Instead, I know in my heart that she is proud of me. As I am proud of me!
I know that she’s up there looking down saying, “Well done, girl! Well done!”
Melissa’s death still remains one of the most painful events of my life. But it is also one of my greatest blessings. It set me on a journey of hope and endurance that ended with self-forgiveness and love.
And for that I am grateful, to Meli and to everyone else who helped me, consoled me, and saw me through this amazing journey.
-Cinthia