When I pulled in Dave was waiting on me. I loved that. He opened my car door and helped me out and then let Sunshine out of the back and took her vest and harness off. She ran across the yard and rolled all over the grass. Dave and I laughed. “So how did your class go today?”
“It went great. There were no problems and I met some new people. We’re working in groups to do a unit and lesson plans that include the state curriculum.”
“Oh yeah, I did that last semester. ELE transition to student teaching, I actually enjoyed that class even though it lasted all day. It keeps you busy.”
“Yeah it does.” Dave and I walked back up to the house. He had his arm around my shoulders. I called for Sunshine. “Sunshine heel.” Dave and I stopped so she could catch up and then the three of us walked into the house.
It was rather chilly that day and I started a pot of coffee. When I came back in, Dave had fallen asleep on the couch. I laughed and went to poke him in the side. He jumped and woke up.
“Dave was today so rough that you are giving out.”
“No, I just didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Why not?”
“I just had a lot on my mind.”
It looked like I was going to have to pull it out of him. “Such as . . .”
“Honestly?”
“Yes, honestly.”
“I was worried sick about you.”
“Aw, Dave, I had Sunshine. She would have been able to help me.”
“I know; I just felt like I had thrown you to the wolves, because I wasn’t there and you couldn’t have reached me if you needed me. The sooner I get through with student teaching, the better.”
“Dave, I’ll be okay. I need to learn to handle this myself anyway, well between me and Sunshine that is. Please try not to worry about me.”
“Yeah right, fat chance of that.”
“Okay, let’s change the subject. Tell me about how teaching went today. What teacher’s room are you in?”
“Well, did I tell you that they had to change my assignment?”
“What do you mean? Are you talking about what school you were assigned too?”
“Yeah, they had to place me at Jones Valley Elementary.”
“No way, are you serious?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Hang on I’ll be right back.” I went back to my room and pulled out my letter of assignment. Then I took it to Dave. “Read this.”
He took it and read it. “Awesome, so you’ll be there in March.”
“Yeah, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.”
“Well good, so I only have to worry about you for a few more weeks.”
“You don’t
have
to worry about me at all. As a matter of fact, I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Lily, I will just tell you now, I am a very persistent person, but I will do what it takes and I will probably annoy the heck out of you, but get used to it.”
“You will do what it takes to do what?”
“I will let you determine the answer to that question.”
That actually made total sense to me, but it wouldn’t have to anyone else. “So I am the determining factor to that question?”
“Lily, you always have been.” He gave me his great smile and I couldn’t help but smile back.
“So by allowing you to worry about me, where does that put you?”
“In a constant state of stress, but I’ll take it just to know you’re okay.”
“Dave I don’t want to be the cause of that for you. I don’t want to cause anything for you.” Tears started coming up, welling in my eyes. Sunshine was immediately there.
I sat down in the floor next to her and wrapped my arms around her and just cried into her fur. My reaction was way overboard, but I remembered that horrible image of Dave that came into my mind just before Christmas that scared him bad enough that he thought something had happened to me. The thought that came with it was, “I don’t want to kill him too”, that is the cause I was thinking about. It really confused him. He came and sat in the floor with me.
He smoothed my hair back. “Lily, I was just joking. Sweetie, you don’t cause me stress all the time. I like being with you and I thought we had fun together, and there are mostly good things about us, as far as I can tell. What has you so upset?”
I hesitated. Then I told him. “I don’t want . . . to cause anything . . . to happen to you.”
“Oh . . . I see. Come sit with me and let’s talk.”
He pulled me back to the couch. “Sunshine, take care of Lily.” She jumped up on the couch and laid herself across my lap. I stroked her fur while Dave talked.
“Lily . . . do you have any idea how many times that has gone through my head over the past several years and especially since last summer. I wondered if I caused everything to happen, if I’m like a bad luck charm. The more I thought about that, though, the more I realized how ridiculous that was. I’ve had more good luck on my side than I realized, well actually it’s not luck, it’s more like providence. You made me realize that the day at the Botanical Gardens. You were the first one I had ever told that too, I never told Brianna because I didn’t feel like I should, but I felt like I should tell you, then you gave me the answers I had been looking for. The more I thought about that the more I realized how true that was. I could have easily been in that truck with Jace, just as easily as you could have. I could have been in that car with my friends that night, but there were other things that were planned for me. You want to know something else strange.”
I looked up at him from Sunshine’s fur that had a wet spot in it where my tears were dripping. He gently wiped them away. I loved the way it felt when he touched me. He was so caring. I leaned my face into his hand and then gave him my attention. “Lily, I almost didn’t come to UM. I had planned to go to Tuscaloosa. Jace talked me into coming to UM.”
“What?”
“Jace talked me into coming to UM, for whatever reason. I think I know the reason now.”
“Dave, I have a confession to make.”
“What could you possibly have to confess?”
“Do you remember back in December, when I was in my room and I screamed and you thought something had happened to me?”
“Yeah, I thought you had thought about Jace in some horrible way.”
“Well, not exactly. I had Jace on my mind, but right along with you.”
“What about me, Lil?”
“I started thinking about, if the situation had been reversed, would Jace have done the things you have done for me; and when I thought that this horrible . . .” I started crying. The floodgate opened. “. . . Image . . . of you . . .” I couldn’t say dead or I would have screamed again because I felt it coming. “. . . You were gone . . . and you were just lying there . . . in that horrible box.”
I went hysterical and Sunshine actually didn’t know what to do. I just kept repeating, screaming, “You were gone, you were gone. Oh my God you were gone.” I grabbed hold of Dave’s shirt with both of my hands. “Please don’t do that to me. Please don’t do that to me.” Then I just sat there and screamed and tried to muffle it with my hands. Screams and tears were all I could produce at that moment. Dave grabbed hold of my arms and pulled me in to his chest and wrapped his strong arms around me.
“Lily, baby, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere. Please calm down.”
I was still going hysterical. Dave held me tighter. “Lily I’m here, I’m here! Honey, I’m here! Bring yourself out of it. It’s not real. I’m here. What you’re seeing is not real.” I had my eyes squeezed shut trying to will my mind to stop the horrible image and it wouldn’t stop. I felt like I was being pulled away from something. “Lily, open your eyes and see me!”
When he yelled, it scared me, enough to bring myself out of my mind. My eyes popped open and I looked at him as my breathing sounded like someone who had just run a marathon. His voice was questioning. “Lily, do you see me? I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”
I started touching his face, because I didn’t believe it. It was like I was living a nightmare and didn’t know what was real. I looked in his eyes and they looked as red as mine felt. Then I fell into him and just cried. He just held me and kissed my forehead, like I was a baby, as I soaked his shirt with my tears.
I must have cried myself to sleep, as I sat there with him, because the next thing I knew I was waking up on my bed, with a quilt thrown over me and Sunshine pressed as close to me as she could possibly get. I had my arm draped over her like she was a big teddy bear. I looked in the corner of my room and saw Dave sitting in the rocking chair. He was watching me. He walked over to me and brushed my hair out of my face as he sat on the side of my bed.
“Hey, Lily girl. Are you better?”
“It was bad wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was pretty bad.”
“Dave you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to, I understand.”
“Well your parents already invited me for dinner and I accepted, so it would be rude for me to just leave.”
“Do they know what happened?”
“I told them what happened, not all the details, but enough for them to know that you had a problem after you came home.”
“I guess you think I’m insane, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t think that, I know you’re still healing and it’s not the memories anymore, it’s the after effects of a trauma like you’ve been through. You begin thinking everything you care about is going to be taken away from you. It’s hard to determine the difference between reality and dreams sometimes. The good thing about it is it will get better.”
I sat up. “When? I feel like everything is going to slip through my fingers.”
I started crying again. He pulled me too him and held me and just let me. “Lil, the only thing I can do is tell you I’m not going anywhere. I know that doesn’t help right now, but that’s all I can do. I wish I could take this away from you, I wish I could do a million other things for you.”
“Dave, just don’t give up on me, please.”
“Lily, I’ve never given up on you, nor do I plan to. You mean too much too me to do that.”
“You‘re going to get tired of picking up the pieces.”
“How about you let me decide whether I do or not, okay? Don’t make the decision for me. If you’re in this for the long run, then so am I.”
Again I had to ask. “Dave, why do you keep coming back?”
“Lily, why do I have to keep answering that question? You already know the answer to that question and until you can answer it for me I won’t answer it again.”
“But, Dave, I don’t understand. I’m not who you used to know. I’m broken. I may never be right again.”
“You’re right, you‘re not the Lily I used to know, because the Lily I used to know was in love with Jace, and I was her best friend. Can you honestly tell me that I’m still
just
your best friend, because I can’t honestly tell you that."
He seemed to almost say something, but decided against it.
"Lily, I told you I’d let that be your decision, and I will stand by that as long as you’ll keep me around, because I may be presumptuous, but I don’t think you can honestly tell me that I’m
just
your best friend. Before you make that decision, however, I want you to be honest with yourself and decide whether the feeling is the result of me being your rescuer or me being something more. I’ll keep coming around until you tell me otherwise. I want you to be happy and I will do whatever it takes to get you there, no matter what.”
Translated, 'I want you to be happy no matter what it costs me.' But as he said, he wanted me to be honest with myself about why he was whatever he was to me. I had something to think about and when he threw that in my lap it
really
made me think. So, that night after he left I started a journal, but it was more of letters I wrote to myself. I started back with the day Dave stopped Chance from hurting me, because in order to determine my future I had to come to grips with my past and it was hard because I had to allow all of those feelings to re-surface and if I didn’t I could never honestly answer Dave’s question.
I wrote the letters in my journal according to what feelings I felt on specific days I remembered. I had found a brand new composition notebook that was in my desk and that became my Journal. I entitled it
Letters to My Future
, By: Lily Grace Aldridge. I would write the date of when I wrote it and the date when it actually happened, sometimes specifically, some generally (month and year). Some were long, some were short, but every one of them was very therapeutic. The first one I wrote:
January 16, 1993 on January of 1991
Dear Lily,
Something happened today that hurt you. You were scared and you couldn’t get away. Chance showed his true self today. You knew he was capable of it and that is why you held on for so long, because you were afraid. You know you should’ve broken it off the first time he had ever hit you, and if your parents ever found out about it you know they would both probably be in jail right now. That’s why you never told them. Dave saved your life and you know that, you and he both know what would’ve possibly happened had he not walked in when he did.