November 2025
The road ahead was darker than usual. November rain slid across the windshield, and the wipers dragged in a tired rhythm that matched the pulse behind my eyes. My shift had ended hours later than it should have, but I needed the overtime. The bills wouldn't pay themselves, and the collectors had stopped pretending to be patient.
The heater in the car blew cold air again. I rubbed my hands together, then kept one on the wheel. The old sedan shuddered whenever I pressed the gas, like it was warning me it couldn't take much more. Neither could I.
A song drifted from the radio—something from the early 2000s. I used to like it. Tonight, it only reminded me of everything I never became.
The highway was almost empty. Most people were home with their families. I tried not to think about mine.
My grandson had turned one last week. I held him for ten minutes before Lissette said he needed a nap. She avoided my eyes the whole time. Her marriage was suffocating her, and I didn't know how to help without making things worse.
Joaquin hadn't answered my calls in months. When he did respond, it was one-word messages that didn't lead anywhere. I used to tell myself he was busy. Now I knew better.
I tightened my grip on the wheel.
Damon was probably at home right now, stretched out on my parents' old couch with glazed eyes and a cigarette between his fingers. He said he'd clean the garage today. He wouldn't. He never did. He called the house "his" now, a claim that grew louder with every month I failed to pay the debts.
The car's engine coughed. I coaxed it forward.
I tried not to think about the notices taped to the front door.
Or the bills I hid under the mattress.
Or the fear I woke up with every morning.
I tried not to think about the twenty years of choices that led me here.
A flash of white light snapped me back.
Headlights swerved into my lane.
I straightened in the seat, heart jumping against my ribs. Maybe the other driver was drunk. Maybe they hit a slick patch. Maybe I drifted. I couldn't tell.
Everything slowed.
The wheel turned in my hands, too fast and too late. The tires screamed. My breath locked in my throat.
My life didn't flash before me. Not the happy moments. Not the handful of times I laughed.
No—what came were the moments I had buried, the ones that shaped me more than anything else.
Eight-year-old Joaquin, standing on a stool to reach the stove, flipping eggs because I couldn't get out of bed.
Lissette's letters from high school, pages filled with questions about her worth that I told myself she would grow out of.
Joaquin sitting on the curb at eleven, backpack on his knees, saying he didn't want to go home because I was fighting with Damon again.
Pawning my father's earrings because the bills were late and Joshua's promises meant nothing.
Celso's wife in the parking lot, her voice sharp enough to slice through me. The disgust in her eyes.
Ricky turning his back and walking away without saying goodbye.
Neighbors whispering about me throughout the 80s, comparing me to prettier girls, calling me forgettable.
Damon's face last year when I said I didn't want to sleep with him anymore. The irritation. The disbelief.
And then—my children's eyes.
Not angry.
Not screaming.
Just hurt.
Tired.
Done.
The headlights grew larger.
My hands shook on the wheel.
A single thought rose above every noise in my head, clearer than anything I'd felt in years.
I ruined everything.
The world tilted.
Metal shrieked.
And then there was nothing at all.
-----------------------------------------------
Cold air seeped through the shattered window. Smoke clung to the roof of the crushed car, drifting above me in a slow, uncertain spiral. I tried to move, but my body stayed pinned against the seat. A sharp pressure wrapped around my ribs, and something warm slid down the side of my face.
When I tried to breathe, the air caught.
The taste of iron filled my mouth.
The sirens were faint. Either they were far away, or I was slipping under.
A streetlight flickered above the wreck. Its glow blurred in my vision, doubling, then smearing. The world looked soft around the edges, as if it wanted to fade before I did.
I couldn't feel my legs.
I rested my head against the seat and let the noise settle. My heartbeat slowed until it felt distant, like something happening inside someone else's chest.
A thought rose through the fog.
Joaquin.
I pictured him at eight years old, feet barely reaching the floor, lifting Lissette onto his hip because I was working double shifts.
Or crying.
Or arguing with Damon.
Or gone.
"I made you the parent," I tried to say, but it came out in a breath I could barely hear.
At thirty, he told me he resented me. I told him I understood.
But I never fixed it.
I never even came close.
"My boy… I'm sorry."
The sirens grew quiet again. Maybe they weren't the ones changing.
Lissette.
I saw her at sixteen, sitting on the floor of her room with a letter on her lap. I'd found it months later tucked behind her dresser.
She wrote she didn't want to be alive.
I convinced myself she was being dramatic.
I told myself my own pain was heavier.
Her pain had been real. It had been too much for a child to carry alone.
"I left you in it," I whispered.
My chest tightened. Whether it was the impact or the truth, I couldn't tell.
The debt.
Stacks of bills hidden under my mattress flashed through my mind.
The cards in collections.
The house in my parents' name.
Everything I touched became heavy enough to drown in.
"They'll inherit the mess," I thought. "Not memories. Not comfort. Just bills."
A low groan slipped out of me when I tried to shift again.
Damon.
Fifteen years of my life went to a man who showed up only when it benefited him.
Fifteen years I could have given to my children instead of begging a grown man to want me.
He wouldn't come to the hospital.
He might not even notice I was gone until he wanted something.
I closed my eyes.
My grandson.
One year old.
Small hands, big eyes.
A laugh I'd only heard twice.
He'd grow up without knowing me.
A grandmother who hovered at the edges of photos, always working, always scrambling, never present.
Just like I'd been as a mother.
Another breath. It stung.
Papa.
I saw him standing in the driveway the day he brought home that bright blue vehicle Joshua wanted. He had worked overseas for years, saving every cent.
He tried to give us stability.
I wrecked it.
I chased the wrong people.
I visited less and less when Damon became angry at any time I spent away.
Papa died in 2012, and I had been too wrapped in a man's moods to say goodbye properly.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to the dark car roof. "I'm so sorry."
My vision pulsed. The streetlight outside blinked again.
Another thought pushed its way through.
Me.
The version of myself I carried since childhood.
The one told she was ordinary.
Unremarkable.
Forgettable.
Not pretty enough.
Not talented enough.
Lucky to be wanted at all.
I chased crumbs because I believed that was all I deserved.
And while I clung to anyone who gave me attention, my children starved for the one thing I never held long enough to give them:
Presence.
"It was never them," I thought. "It was me. I chose wrong every time."
The dark outside deepened. The sirens guttered into silence.
Or maybe my hearing did.
The cold spread up my arms.
A last thought surfaced, trembling and desperate, directed at no one and everything all at once.
"If second chances were real… if I could go back to when they were small… I would choose them. I swear I would choose them."
Heat rose behind my eyes.
The world dimmed.
"Please," I whispered. "Let me save them."
Light thinned.
Sound slipped away.
And then there was nothing.
The Void
There was no impact anymore.
No metal.
No cold air.
No weight holding me down.
There wasn't even darkness.
Darkness was something.
This was nothing.
I tried to breathe and felt no lungs move.
Tried to blink and felt no eyelids.
My body was gone.
Or maybe it had never mattered as much as I thought it did.
A quiet space held me.
Not comforting.
Not frightening.
Just… absence.
I searched for something familiar—my children's faces, my own name, even the ache in my chest that had been there for decades.
None of it came.
If this was death, it didn't look like any version I had imagined.
No gates.
No light.
No voices calling me home.
Only the awareness that I existed without shape or weight.
A faint shift stirred around me.
Not sound.
Not movement.
More like pressureless attention, the way a room feels different when someone steps into it.
I reached toward it, though I had no hands to lift.
Something responded, or maybe I only wanted it to.
Warmth gathered at the edges of the nothing.
A pull.
Not strong, not gentle—steady, like a decision had already been made somewhere beyond my reach.
Thoughts rose through me without words.
You asked.
The space seemed to tighten, as if closing fingers around a thread.
We answer.
Or maybe I imagined it.
Maybe it was only my mind trying to make sense of the void.
Maybe the universe didn't speak at all.
The warmth intensified, spreading through whatever I was now. It wasn't love or forgiveness. It felt more like a door opening behind me when I didn't know I was waiting to walk through.
The nothing around me stretched.
A single sensation broke through the emptiness.
Falling.
Not down—just toward something.
The warmth pulled harder.
And then—