Selling My Soul for My Kids

It’s crazy how your life can change in the blink of an eye. One minute, you can have the perfect life—a wonderful husband, three beautiful babies, an amazing home. The American dream at its finest, white picket fence and all. Then, just like that, tragedy can take it all away, and you’re living a life of nightmares. I’ll start by giving you a little background on my life so you can understand just how much was taken away from me. My husband, Chris, was the man that every woman dreams about. He was the modern day version of Prince Charming. He owned a car detailing business that was picking up high-profile clients left and right. He was handsome, faithful, gentle, protective, and a wonderful father. He was incredibly brave and would never hesitate to help those in need. I think…no, I’m sure that if Chris were more of a coward, our lives would have been better. You know what they say. Hindsight is 20/20. We had started dating during our senior year of high school. He went to college, and I went to work. We stayed together while he worked on his degree in Business Management, and we got married right after graduation. Our wedding was small because he’d just launched his business, and we needed to be frugal. That didn’t take away from the elegance of everything. I felt like a queen that day as I committed my life to him in front of our closest family and friends. Six months after we got married, we closed on our very first home. It was what many people might call a starter home. It had two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, a living room, and a small patio that was perfect for cookouts. The front yard was the perfect size to cut with a push lawn mower. The house was small, but it was beautiful. It was a turnkey property, and we wasted no time making it our own. Once we bought our house, our s*x life changed. I believe it was because we had more privacy. In an apartment, we always had to be concerned about neighbors hearing us. In our house, we had the space we needed to make as much noise as we wanted. “For the better” would be a complete understatement when it came to the change in our s*x life. Chris did things to my body that I had never imagined. I craved him and his tricks every night. Before I knew it, I was pregnant. Things seemed to be going well. Great marriage, steady and growing income, baby on the way. I was happy, and I couldn’t have asked for more. Well, more is what we got. We found out that we had triplets on the way. “A one in 10,000 chance,” the doctor had said. “Maybe you two should play the lottery!” The look on Chris’s face when the doctor told us that—it was the first time I’d ever seen him look worried. It took a few minutes for him to get over the initial shock, but once he got past it, he went right back to his positive, motivated disposition. “We got this, babe,” he reassured me. I had never doubted him before, and I had no plans to start that day. I had a tough pregnancy. Growing three humans was no easy feat. Eventually, I had to stop working, which meant that Chris had to work more. He rose to the challenge, doubling his clients by the time the babies came. My husband was the most amazing man I’d ever known. I had never had a real father figure in my life. My dad was a deadbeat who overdosed in a dark alley when I was nine years old. My mom died of cancer when I was sixteen years old. I ended up in the foster system for two years, which was hell. I met Chris in my last year of foster care and if it weren’t for him, I don’t think I would have made it through. I was so thankful to him for being the perfect man. He was my rock, my savior. There were plenty of days I felt I didn’t deserve him, but for some reason, I had him. When our babies were ready to meet the world, I panicked but Chris was ready. Everything went smoothly. I was able to push them all out, which was a blessing because I had been thinking I would need a C-section. They were born happy, healthy, crying babies. Two boys and a girl. We named them Zachary, Zain and Zara. You’ve heard the saying, “too good to be true?” There was so much goodness in my life that I should have expected a storm to come at some point. Nothing and no one in this world is perfect. Our storm had started brewing and it wasn’t a simple rainstorm. It was a tornado. My babies were born in September 2018. That means their introduction to the world started with the onset of the pandemic. Thankfully, our little family stayed healthy through the next two historical, unprecedented years, but Chris’ parents were less fortunate than we were. They both contracted Covid-19 and died alone in the hospital. Chris changed when that happened. He was incredibly depressed. He was no longer the Prince Charming that I had married. He shut down and the more I tried to get him to open up, the more withdrawn he became from the kids and me. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the shutdown. It tanked our business. We tried to revive it when things opened back up, but we had taken too much of a hit, and we couldn’t bounce back. Chris really lost it then. As we found ourselves struggling to pay our bills, he became someone I didn’t recognize. He started drinking and he became verbally abusive. The sound of the babies crying would set him off. There were plenty of nights when he would come home late, reeking of booze. That led to nights where he didn’t come home at all. I never thought Chris was cheating on me, and I was right. He was never unfaithful. He just couldn’t pull himself out of the depression. We qualified for the mortgage forbearance program under the CARES act that former President Trump had signed into law and that helped for a year, but Chris simply couldn’t find a job that paid enough to help us catch up. We lost our home in 2022, but that’s not when the tornado started. It started the day after we moved into a rundown, one-bedroom apartment. It’s the same day I became a single parent to three four-year old toddlers. Chris had a moment of clarity when he saw a woman being robbed in broad daylight. For the last moment of his life, he was his old, brave self…the Prince Charming I married. One shot. The bullet went straight into his forehead.