Dear Jack (Visual Story)

Prologue

I adored Jack. He was my first everything. My highschool boyfriend, college boyfriend, and he was my soon to be husband. That is until he died at the age of twenty two.

As the ropes slowly lowered, scratching against the metal hinges, his coffin disappeared into the cold hard dirt of the open grave. When the cherry wood disappeared from view it hit me that this was real. Jack was gone. My Jack was gone and suddenly I couldn't breathe. My thoughts were mush in my brain, unable to form a single coherent word as fear took hold of my mind and pushed me deeper into the recesses of everything I had hidden inside me.

How was I ever supposed to continue on without him here next to me? Without his guiding hand urging me forward into the dark bleary unknown? Without his love to stop the urges that controlled me like a puppet on strings? Without him I was the same broken girl I used to be, the same girl who made a complete mess of her life and used pain as a way of coping.

Reality crushed me and all I could think about was all the things I never got to say to him. All the things I had kept inside for fear of scaring him away.

A month passed, yet still I felt hollow inside. Like a piece of me was missing. I had spent most of it in bed, refusing to turn the lights on or get up and do anything. All I could bring myself to do was scream and cry, asking why it had to be him. Asking why I had lost another person I loved. I couldn't even put into words anymore how exactly I had felt about Jack, I just knew I missed him so much it physically hurt.

Everyone pushed me to move on, to let go of him and let him rest in peace, but I knew that I didn't have a chance to even begin to move on until I said the things I had held back.

Going to his grave and talking wasn't good enough for me. I wondered if somehow he wouldn't be able to hear me and my words would fall on deaf ears. I hadn't visited his grave since the day he was buried, and it was better that way. It was easier to hold on to the memory that was Jack.

As the words of my friends telling me to move on swirled around in my head, pushing me to just get it over with, I decided the only way to truly know my words would be sent straight to him was to send them in various messages to his cellphone.

Texting was how our relationship started, after that day I met him by the lockers, and it only seemed fitting to end it there exactly how it had begun.

I didn't know what lay ahead for my life, or if I would ever feel about someone the way that I thought I felt about Jack but I knew if I never got out the words that haunted my brain every single moment that I would always be broken.

I didn't want to be broken. I just wanted to feel whole again. Jack had made me feel whole. Without him I was empty inside. I didn't know if I could even do this. Already time had passed and I felt nothing but empty, but with everyone urging me to let go, it seemed like the only option. I had to at least give it a try.

I pulled out my phone knowing that if I didn't do it now, I would never get the guts to do it again. I clicked open to his thread and scrolled back through our last messages as a fresh set of tears rolled down my face.

I didn't think I could cry anymore, because crying was all I seemed to do lately, but apparently I was wrong.

A fresh set of tears streamed down my face, burning my eyes as my vision became blurry. I wiped at them, forcing myself to catch hold of my shaking breaths and get the first text over with. If I could just send one, the rest would be easy.

I knew that eventually someone would take over Jacks number and I would have to stop, but until then I could pour my heart out with every word. I could somehow put the pain into words and try to move forward like everyone wanted.

I started typing, letting the words flow through me and onto the screen. It didn't take long to have a full message ready to go.

I thought about my friend, the only friend that mattered, and wondered what she would say if she knew exactly what I was doing. She would probably tell me I had lost it completely, but I quickly pushed it from my mind as I re-read the words over and over again.

My finger hovered over the send button and I took a deep breath and sent it. I waited for a few moments, like an idiot thinking he would reply. Then I remembered he was gone and he wasn't going to reply so I cried all over again. The crushing pain of my heart breaking all over again consumed me as sob after sob ripped through my body and out of my throat in the form of screams. I couldn't stop until my throat was sore and hoarse, and I just couldn't scream anymore.