Lost My Only One

[Orpheus13]

Right.. So my fiancé passed December 3, 2011. She was 27 years old. At the time I managed a pool. It was a normal Saturday. I worked in the morning and started heading home after work. I made two stops. I got a carton of smokes, I hated that she smoked, but I smoke now so w.e. and I filled up our propane tank. (How many times do you think about well what if?)

When I pulled up to our house I saw running water off the side where the bathroom was and my heart sank. I was in amazing shape at the time, endurance swimmer and runner..did life guard training.. trained triatheltes.. coached swim team.. taught CPR..

so I ran up to the house with haste and found my baby face down in the tub with the shower on.. underwater.

Now I used to teach that stuff. God knows why I don't do it anymore. So must've taken me half a second to process the situation, before yanking her out and starting CPR, while simultaneously getting 911 on speaker. There was a noticeable knot on her head, her lips were blue, she was cold.

When I went to breathe into her mouth, gas escaped. And I will never for the rest of my days forget that taste. I guess looking back. That was the moment when I knew something was very wrong. I had just tasted death on the lips of my baby.

but I could bring her back. I could save her! It's my job, it's what I did 24/7 365, and I did it well. So I tried. God I tried. I had maybe 12 15 mins of me trying to revive her. Before the emits arrived and we worked on her another 20 mins. The looks on their face say what I refuse to accept. And when they tried to stop I wouldn't let them. And when they tried to stop again two big ol texas sheriff's deputies had to hold me down..

after while they let me go. So I sat there a while. When my phone rang. It was her mom and she wanted to know what her daughter wanted for Christmas. A new hair straightener was what she wanted. I told her that, before asking her to walk outside so she wouldn't lose it in Front of my babe's two little sisters. And then I told her mother what had happened.

I could talk about the red morgue bag or the water dripping. That sticks with me, or the panic attacks or the guilt or the many awful ways I tried to deal with my pain. Or how I couldn't pray for anything because the one thing that I had prayed for harder than anything in my life was cruelly denied.

But I'm here today for a different reason.

You see we had moved into that lil house, which had the akward tub.. in order to save a lil money on rent so I could go back to school.. which I had started that fall 11'.

So now it's years later and I'm about to graduate with a good degree from TX A&M. So my therapists called it hyper activity. I started focusing on things like school to avoid facing the obvious. I discounted it. But now as I near graduation.. a goal we started together. .

I'm in the worst spiral of depression and anxiety I've been in since year 1.. 3 years later. .

[Legacy]

Hang in there. Just remember that you did this not only for yourself but her too. This is what she had wanted and you, amazingly, accomplished it even with the kind of pain you were in. Don't let this be a depressing thought. Please be strong and celebrate. Celebrate the bravery her love have given you to do what you have done. She must be so proud of you. I only wish to have half of your courage to get to that point myself.