Spotlight: Constant by Rachel Higginson

There were times in my life that I thought I wouldn’t survive. I stood at the precipice of death and peered over the edge. One misstep or ill-timed gust of wind and I would have tipped over, fallen down the black abyss and never resurfaced.

Sometimes when I looked back at those moments, those infinitely dark and twisted times, I couldn’t breathe. I would feel my heart shatter all over. I would experience the tearing, crushing, ripping apart of my limbs and muscles, my tendons and veins, my heart and my mind. I would forget how to breathe.

I would forget how to be.

Until I remembered him.

He was the one constant in my life that had pushed me through the darkness. He was the one constant in my life that loved me beyond everything else, beyond what I was or had been or could ever be. He wanted me to be better. He wanted to be better for me.

And yet he was as tangled in the madness as I was.

I didn’t have that life anymore. I had broken free and found something safe to build a foundation on. But I couldn’t remember the past without imagining his smile or his eyes, his touch. I couldn’t think about where I had been without thinking of where we were supposed to go.

Where he was supposed to take me.

Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way you plan. Sometimes circumstances change and sometimes they’re for the better.

But he was my constant then and he is the constant ghost that haunts me now.

I might not be with him.

But he will always be with me.