A mini-series from Jessie Stephens, author of the new book Heartsick.
This is The Beginning of the End, a Relationship Doctor mini-series from author and podcaster Jessie Stephens. Jessie's debut book, Heartsick, follows three stories of heartbreak, the kind of heartbreak that upends a life, and puts words around a brand of grief that we, as a culture, do not respect enough.
In this three-part mini-series, Jessie shares three brand new stories, unique to the podcast. In episode one, we hear the story of Samantha.
Purchase Heartsick:
Read a transcript of this episode on Simplecast.
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Hello and welcome to The Beginning Of The End, a Relationship Doctor mini-series. I’m your host, author, and podcaster, Jessie Stephens. My debut book, Heartsick, follows three stories of heartbreak - the kind of heartbreak that upends a life - and puts words around a brand of grief we, as a culture, do not respect enough.
I wrote the book, and started this podcast, because after my own heartbreaks, of which I’ve had many, I did not know where to turn. I didn’t want self-help or inspirational quotes or a half-hearted assurance that there’s plenty of fish in the sea.
In those moments, I felt as though my future had been erased. A road that had seemed so sure, I had seen it so clearly, had suddenly turned into a cliff, and I think I was in shock. I didn’t know how I could possibly get through the afternoon. And then the night. And then tomorrow. The very essence of who I was had been rejected by someone I loved. There was the grief, of course. But there was also the self-loathing. The assault on the ego. A feeling of cataclysmic failure, and that my sense of things was not something I could trust.
While the book follows the stories of Ana, Patrick, and Claire, this podcast will tell new stories.
Since writing the book, I’ve been flooded with unbelievable accounts of heartbreak, the kind that makes you gasp and feel sick and wonder how that person managed to pull themselves back together. Here, over three episodes, I will tell three stories of heartbreak. Because, it turns out, it is in those moments when we feel the most alone that we are our most connected.
A quick word of warning before we continue – this episode features some heavy topics and family-unfriendly language.
It’s the middle of spring in Australia, 2013 – the year House of Cards comes to Netflix and Prince George is born and Katy Perry is blaring out of every car radio in the country – and Samantha stumbles onto her friend’s front porch.
She finished work at a local nightclub and needs a place to sleep. It’s 4:30am – considered late on a Saturday night to a woman just 20, but likely understood to be early Sunday morning for the neighbours.
Used to the outdoors and unbothered by the mild weather, Samantha curls up in a ball and falls asleep right there on the veranda, relishing in what would end up being just a 10 minute power nap.
That Sunday, October 26, Samantha goes to something called the Picnic Races at Harden, about an hour and a half drive from where she lives in Canberra. With a car full of friends in the back, she drives the 126 kilometres – tired, but not debilitatingly so.
The highways are long and mostly flat, green paddocks as far as the eye can see.
She is thinking about Sean, her boyfriend of a little over a year, and she can feel the corners of her mouth curl upwards.
Being in the car often makes her think of Sean. The first time they met had been at a friend’s dress up party, her in a giraffe onesie which had been exceptionally comfortable. She had noticed him. Of course she had. She didn’t say anything though. Wouldn’t have even known how to start a conversation. But as she climbed into her front seat, three friends piling into the back and a fourth slamming the passenger side door, Sean approached her window and knocked. Then, he opened the door.
She wondered if she had left something behind. Or her tires were flat. But he simply said: “Sam, your tail is hanging out. I’ll get that for you.” The way he smiled told her something but she didn’t know what. He tucked her giraffe’s tail securely into the car, shut the door, and waved her goodbye.
The highway she’s on eventually leads her to Harden, but once they arrive Samantha feels tired and the heat becomes oppressive. After a few hours, her friends decide to head to a local pub, and Samantha tells them she’ll see them later. She’s going to drive home.
Again, her mind wanders to Sean. He’s nine years older than her, and she likes how life feels with him. It’s exciting and full and her arms are sore from their morning PT sessions and a few months ago they jumped out of a plane together and they travel and fantasise about the future and she never thought things could be this good. She rarely thinks it. Just like most of us rarely think it. But she knows, in that moment, she is lucky.
Her day dreaming is interrupted by a text message she shouldn’t check but she does. It’s her boss asking her to work tonight. He’ll pay her double. She needs the money. She’s saving to eventually enter the Australian Defence Force, and working as much as she can; all week on a farm, and then three nights a week at a nightclub. She says yes.
It is almost 5am when her shift ends, and she feels drunk from lack of sleep. Her words are no longer coming out in the right order and her blue eyes are bloodshot and stinging. It reminds her of jetlag, how tired she feels. The drive shouldn’t be long though, and on her way home she stops at a service station to fill her car up with fuel. She buys a salad wrap and a Fizzer, and the fluorescent light of the petrol station gives her a headache.
She remembers that.
She does not remember what happened next.
She does not remember falling asleep 15 kilometres down the highway or the way her car veered off the road or how her car flipped. She does not know the strangers who called an ambulance.
She does not remember the ambulance arriving, or that the paramedics failed to strap her in properly.
She was unconscious when the ambulance, with a patient not correctly strapped in, collided with another car.
It would be her second accident. In one night. On a single stretch of highway.
When she wakes up, 20-year-old Samantha is told that her right leg does not work. Neither does her right arm, the arm that had learned to throw a ball and brush her teeth and write and paint.
It’s called hemiparesis – a word that Samantha has never heard before. A five syllable word that is said too quickly, too matter-of-factly, to possibly reflect the magnitude of what it truly means. It refers to paralysis down one side of the body. Her injury runs from the base of her neck, all the way down to the tips of her toes, on her right side.
The words that echo, on repeat, through her head are “what the fuck?” She stares at the ceiling, playing out a life in which she gets up and goes to the gym with her boyfriend and then arrives at work, using her body without giving it much thought. This is a nightmare. This is a nightmare. And I’m about to wake up, she thinks. Just. Wake. Up. She can imagine the terror when she gasps for breath, covered in a cold sweat, thrown for a moment by a dream in which she lost everything. And by the afternoon, the dream would be forgotten. A weird feeling. A memory she can’t quite touch.
But she never wakes up. This is the bad dream.
Sean’s eyes are wet when he visits for the first time. She can feel that he is running his fingers through her bloody, greasy, matted, blonde hair. He whispers, as though the words are only meant for them, “It’s okay. We got this. I love you.”
She does not feel gratitude. She does not feel relief. She feels regret. Regret for what she’s done to him and everyone who made the stupid mistake of loving her.
Days turn into weeks, and Sean sleeps in the lounge chair next to her hospital bed. She watches him sleep sometimes, his body twitching. Sometimes he groans. He is in a nightmare too, she thinks. When he sleeps he gets to be someplace else with someone else, with a future still available to him. She thinks about what it means to love someone. Sacrifice. Encouraging them to be the best version of themselves. Freedom. Love should be freedom. And Sean has found himself in a prison.
As he thanks the nurses and asks if she’d like one of those sandwiches from downstairs or if they should start that new show everyone’s talking about, she notices his face has changed. Lines have appeared between his eyebrows, and his skin has lost its colour. She knows, despite what he might say, he cannot take more time off work. At some stage, he must return to the life waiting for him.
Then came That Day about six weeks after the accident. She could see the glint in everyone’s eyes - her mums, Sean’s, her friends. The desperation they had that she could perform a miracle. She had heard hints of it - how she’d always been so strong and resilient but she felt like none of those things and the pressure was making her angry. They were all talking about something that didn’t matter, as though life could just go on as normal, when she smelt something. She knew immediately what it was. And she knew this was it.
She yelled at everyone to get out. “Get out. Get out.” They stared at her and she wished she could push them but all she had was her voice and she swore and shouted and no one was listening. She had lost control of her bowel, and in front of the man that once found her sexy and independent and funny, she was now reduced to her bodily functions. She had never hated herself so much.
Samantha knew she still loved Sean to death when she ended their relationship. She couldn’t let her accident destroy another life and she knew, as a partner, that she had nothing to give. Her life revolved around any semblance of recovery, and all the unsaid promises she’d made as his partner a year ago no longer mattered. She was alone, no matter how tightly he squeezed her hand.
His grief - about her accident, and now his own heartbreak - was not something she could take on. First, she told him in person it was over. He could not change her mind. But then, as the days wore on, he did. Eventually, she sent a long message, explaining why it had to end. It may be circumstance, but he had to respect her decision. It was the only power she had. Sean was angry. They both said things they would later regret. She made herself mean and wrote messages full of things she didn’t believe in an attempt to make him hate her. Eventually, it worked.
He never stopped sending her funny things he saw on the internet though. Sometimes there was a 2am phone call. He would come to understand her decision, although he wished she’d made a different one.
Years on, Samantha would fall in love again, with a man who never knew her as anything other than this Samantha. It hurt Sean a lot, at first, but soon he too found someone else, and they would have a baby together, something he had always wanted. He would be an incredible father.
His relationship broke down after their baby came along, and Samantha could be the support that Sean deserved. She’d known - always known - that they could have been happy together. Their future was something she had never questioned. It was circumstance, she always told him. Their relationship ended because of circumstance.
That meant there was always sorrow and regret and resentment. Their friendship was never simple. But they were connected by something unexplainable. There was still love.
In January 2019, the day after purchasing a local pub which had been a lifelong dream of Sean’s, he ended his own life.
It was a heartbreak Samantha did not know possible.
Even in the face of rejection he never came to terms with, he was always there. Sean would always be there, on the other end of the phone - a man who knew her better than just about anyone.
Could things have been different? If she’d never had the accident? Or if she’d made an alternate decision? Would his family, a family she loved, still have their son?
She could logically know this was not her fault, and at the same time feel with every fibre of her being that it was.
But there is little that can be done with regret. She had been to Sean what she could. Circumstance. Their relationship had been so shaped by circumstance. She could not know the ending to a story she was so busy writing.
Love does not evaporate when a person disappears. You do not know where to put it all. But loss reminds you to love harder. To hold on tighter. A lesson we are all taught more than once, but are so quick to forget.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Beginning of The End, a Relationship Doctor mini-series. If this episode spoke to you, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more stories like Samantha’s, you can buy my book Heartsick, which follows three stories of love and loss, via the link in the description of this episode, or at any good bookstore. Until next week…
Relationship Doctor is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. Find out more at QuickAndDirtyTips.com, or check out the show notes.