The car was parked along the curb in Cass Corridor exactly where I had left it, as if the entire fucking world had agreed to remain ordinary while mine collapsed. The streetlights cast weak orange circles across the pavement. Buildings rose above me in dark blocks. Somewhere nearby, people were talking, dealing, arguing, laughing, and doing whatever they had planned before gunfire ripped my future apart.
I opened the driver’s door and lowered myself into the seat. My waist felt wrong without the Beretta. For so long the weight of that gun had been part of getting dressed, like shoes or a belt. Now there was only empty space against my side and an emptier space inside my chest.
I put the key into the ignition.
The engine turned over. The dashboard lit my hands and the steering wheel in a dull green glow. I looked through the windshield but could barely process what was in front of me. The street was visible. My brain simply refused to assign meaning to it. A road was a road. A red light was a red light. None of it belonged to a world I recognized anymore.
I pulled away from the curb.
I had no map. I had no destination. I had no plan beyond getting away from the apartment, the blood, and every block where Dominique still existed in my memory. I wanted distance from the doorway where the shots came through. I wanted distance from Script crying in his bedroom. I wanted distance from the kitchen table where I had left the loaded gun and the identity attached to it.
Mostly I wanted distance from myself.
The car moved south through Detroit while my hands handled the mechanics. I stopped at lights. I turned when a street forced me to turn. I merged with traffic when traffic appeared. My body understood driving even though my mind had shut down nearly every other function.
I reached the highway and took the ramp without deciding where it led. Interstate 75 carried me south, so south became the direction.
Detroit began shrinking in the rearview mirror.
I wish I could say I felt some release as the city disappeared. I felt none. Geography could separate me from the room where my life ended, but it could not separate me from what I had seen. Dominique’s face kept appearing against the windshield. I could still feel her body against me. I could still see blood. I could still hear the confused noise after the shooting, when everyone was trying to understand what had already become permanent.
My plan, if it can be called a plan, was to run my car off a cliff or slam into something hard enough that I would never wake up. I had no interest in surviving. My life had been taken from me, and my brain responded by trying to finish the job.
I am going to be brutally direct about that because dressing it up would be dishonest. I wanted to die. I watched concrete barriers slide past and considered turning the wheel. I crossed overpasses and imagined going through the guardrail. Every large support column became an option. Every curve offered a place where I could stop steering and let speed decide the rest.
My fingers tightened around the wheel until my knuckles lost their color.
Then the barrier passed.
Another one appeared farther ahead. I considered that one too. It passed as well.
This repeated for miles.
I was not choosing life in any grand or inspiring sense. I was postponing death by seconds. The car would reach an object, my mind would tell me to strike it, and some current beneath conscious thought would keep my hands steady until the opportunity fell behind me. Then another opportunity came. I delayed again.
Sometimes survival begins as nothing more impressive than failing to die during the next thirty seconds.
The night covered the interstate. Headlights approached on the opposite side and flashed across the median. Taillights floated ahead of me, disappeared around bends, then returned in the distance. Green highway signs announced places that meant little to me. Toledo. Dayton. Cincinnati. They were names printed in reflective paint, not destinations.
I drove into Ohio without marking the border in my mind. Michigan ended. Ohio began. I kept moving.
I could not listen to music. Every song carried too much emotional risk. A melody might remind me of Dominique. A lyric might describe love or death with the cheap confidence of someone who could shut off the recording when it became uncomfortable. Even commercials sounded obscene. Businesses were selling cars, meals, and furniture inside a universe where she no longer existed.
I shut off the radio.
Silence was worse.
The tires hummed against the blacktop. Wind pressed against the car. The engine held its steady mechanical note. Inside those sounds, my mind replayed the shooting with small changes, as if one altered movement might create a different ending. If I had stood somewhere else. If I had seen the shooter sooner. If we had left earlier. If I had pulled her down faster. If I had chosen another house, another block, another city, another life.
Grief loves the word if because it offers an infinite supply of ways to prosecute yourself.
None of those imaginary versions mattered. Time had already closed behind the bullet. Yet my brain kept building alternate outcomes and forcing me to watch each one collapse. Survivors guilt entered through every opening. I was alive. Dominique was dead. Our unborn child was dead. I had carried a gun and built a reputation around being prepared, but I had failed at the single moment when preparation was supposed to count.
I had lived with depression long before that night. Death had often seemed less like an enemy and more like an exit sign glowing at the end of a miserable hallway. Childhood abuse, psychiatric drugs, poverty, rejection, and the constant sense that institutions could do whatever they wanted to me had created an old familiarity with suicidal thought. I had looked forward to death through much of my adult life.
Now death felt urgent.
There is a difference between the distant wish to stop existing and the acute impulse to act. Chronic depression can sit in the background like weather. You go to work beneath it. You eat beneath it. You have conversations while some part of your mind quietly reminds you that leaving is always possible. Acute grief changes the pressure. The thought stops being theoretical. It becomes a command screaming through every nerve.
That was the condition behind the wheel.
My breathing became painful. Each breath seemed too shallow, so I pulled in more air, but the larger breath hurt my chest. My jaw remained clenched. My shoulders rose toward my neck. Tears came without warning and blurred the highway until I had to wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.
Rain started somewhere in Ohio.
At first it was a light tapping against the windshield. Then the sky opened. The wipers moved back and forth at full speed, barely clearing the glass before another sheet of water covered it. Trucks passed and threw spray across my windshield. Their red marker lights became smeared lines in the rain.
Under ordinary conditions I would have slowed down or stopped. I was exhausted, emotionally destroyed, and barely connected to my surroundings. Yet I continued south. The danger of the drive was obvious, but danger had lost its authority over me. When a person has already accepted death, warnings about consequences become weak arguments.
Still, I kept the car between the lines.
I passed exits with gas stations, restaurants, and motels. Each one offered a place to stop. I rejected them without thought. Stopping meant sitting. Sitting meant being alone inside a motionless car with the full force of what had happened. As long as the highway demanded small physical decisions, some fraction of my mind had work to do.
Watch the lane.
Adjust the wheel.
Check the mirror.
Maintain speed.
Read the sign.
Pass the truck.
Those tasks were basic, but they occupied enough mental space to delay the act my despair demanded. Driving became a narrow corridor of immediate responsibilities. I could not solve my life. I could keep the tires pointed south for one more mile.
Hours blurred together. Time was no longer measured by clocks. It was measured by fuel levels, state lines, and the rhythm of the dashed white lines passing beneath the hood. I drank whatever was in the car. I do not remember eating. Hunger had disappeared along with every other ordinary signal.
Cincinnati rose around me in scattered lights. The highway curved through the city, and signs directed traffic toward Kentucky. I followed them because they were there.
The Ohio River passed beneath me. Then I was in another state.
Kentucky stretched out in darkness. The road climbed and dropped through hills I could barely see beyond the range of my headlights. This was closer to the terrain I had imagined using to end my life. Curves, steep drops, barriers, and black space waited beyond the shoulder.
I looked over the edge more than once.
My hands stayed on the wheel.
I cannot explain that as courage. Courage implies a level of purpose I lacked. Some primitive survival mechanism was operating below the wreckage. The same body that wanted relief from pain also resisted destruction. One system demanded an ending. Another kept correcting the steering wheel by half an inch.
People often talk about suicidal thought as if it is a clean desire. They ask whether a person wants to live or wants to die, as though the mind must select one box. My experience was far more fucked up. I wanted death with an intensity that frightened even me, while another part kept buying time. Both urges were real. Neither had complete control.
That conflict saved me.
Had I been sitting alone in a quiet room, the suicidal impulse might have occupied everything. On the highway, reality kept interrupting it. A truck changed lanes. Rain reduced visibility. The road bent. My gas gauge fell. An exit approached. The physical world demanded responses before grief could finish its argument.
I drove. And drove. And continued to drive, with no fucking idea where I was going.
Sometime before dawn, the rain weakened. The darkness shifted from solid black to a washed-out gray. Trees and hills emerged beside the interstate. Traffic thickened. People around me were beginning ordinary mornings. Workers carried coffee in cup holders. Families had luggage stacked behind them. Delivery trucks moved toward stores.
I wondered how many drivers would have recognized that the man in the next lane was debating whether to crash into them, a wall, or nothing at all.
Probably none.
That is one of the terrifying facts about emotional collapse. A person can look functional while standing one decision away from death. He can operate a vehicle, answer a question, swipe a credit card, or say he is fine. Society expects suicidal people to announce themselves through visible madness. Many do not. They remain polite. They follow traffic laws. They may even make jokes while mentally selecting an exit.
We have built a culture that treats pain as private until it creates a public mess. Men in particular are trained to hide despair, then blamed when the hidden despair explodes. We tell them to toughen up, keep working, stop whining, and handle their own shit. When one of them dies, everyone asks why he never said anything.
Maybe he tried. Maybe nobody knew how to hear language that was not a direct confession.
Maybe he had spent his whole life watching vulnerability get punished.
I had no safe person to call that night. I had associates, street connections, and people who respected the name Fuzzbuster. Respect based on toughness does not always give a man somewhere to place unbearable grief. The identity that made me look strong had left me emotionally homeless.
So the road became the only place that could hold me.
By mid-morning, highway signs began mentioning Nashville. I had traveled hundreds of miles without choosing Tennessee. The city appeared because Interstate 75 had carried me toward other roads and I had followed whatever seemed south. My decisions were barely decisions. I was moving through America by momentum.
The gas warning light came on.
My eyes burned. My back hurt. My hands cramped from gripping the wheel. The trance was breaking because my body was reaching its limits. I found myself on the outer ring of Nashville with traffic moving around me and sunlight spreading across the roadway.
I had survived the night.
I was not relieved. Dominique was still gone. The future remained unimaginable. I still wanted death. Yet the sharpest edge of the impulse had changed. Exhaustion had weakened it enough that another need could enter the argument. My body wanted fuel, water, and a place to stop moving.
That small change mattered.
The Wave Inside the Shock
Acute suicidal desire often behaves like a panic response to pain that exceeds the mind’s current capacity. The person is not calmly evaluating every possible future and reaching an objective conclusion. The brain is trying to escape an unbearable present. Since it cannot see beyond the present, it mistakes permanent death for immediate relief.
Grief distorts time. A shattered person experiences the current minute as if it will last forever. The mind says, This pain is all that exists. This pain will always exist. End consciousness and you end the pain. That logic feels complete during shock because the brain temporarily loses access to other possibilities.
The missing possibility is change.
The pain may remain severe for months or years, but its chemical intensity will not stay at the same peak every second. The body cannot maintain maximum panic forever. Adrenaline burns down. Exhaustion enters. Hunger returns. Sleep eventually forces itself into the equation. Every delay creates a chance for another part of the brain to regain influence.
That is why permanent decisions should never be made during the first blast of grief. The mind issuing the command is injured. It may sound certain, but certainty is one of shock’s most convincing lies.
Physical distance can help because places hold emotional pressure. The room where something happened contains smells, objects, stains, voices, and visual reminders. Remaining there may force the brain to relive the event without interruption. Leaving the location can reduce the number of triggers arriving at once.
My drive created distance, but it was also dangerously reckless. I was exhausted and actively considering a crash. Nobody should copy the literal method. If you are in acute despair, give your keys to someone else. Walk with another person. Sit in an emergency room. Ride with a trusted driver. Enter a public place where isolation becomes harder. Movement helps, but the movement must reduce danger rather than place strangers in its path.
The useful principle was momentum. My body continued performing tasks while my mind tried to destroy itself. Each mile placed another interval between impulse and action. Eventually those intervals accumulated into a night survived.
I died in another sense that day. The Jeremy who had existed before the shooting never returned. Some parts of him deserved to disappear. Other parts were taken without permission. The man left behind would carry more grief, less fear, and a different relationship with chaos.
Years later, people would wonder how I could stand in front of police, politicians, federal agents, and hostile crowds without folding. They saw fearlessness. What they could not see was the southern blacktop beneath it. Once I had spent an entire night arguing with death at highway speed, ordinary intimidation lost much of its force.
That night also shaped the way I approached business. When a company faced a crisis, I rarely froze. I kept operations moving while everyone else stared at the disaster. I separated the next physical task from the larger catastrophe. Which account needed attention? Which customer had to be called? Which bill could wait? Motion created room for strategy.
There is a danger in that strength. Work can become another highway, and constant activity can delay grief without resolving it. I have used momentum both as survival and avoidance. The distinction depends on what happens after the immediate emergency. Movement gets you through the wave. Eventually you must stop somewhere safe and face what followed you.
An Emergency Protocol for the Worst Hour
If despair reaches the point where death appears like the only exit, do not negotiate with it in isolation. Treat the impulse as an emergency signal, not a final truth. Your only responsibility during that hour is to remain alive until the pressure drops.
Get around another human being immediately. Go to a trusted person, a staffed emergency room, a fire station, or any safe public setting. Tell someone directly that you may hurt yourself. Clear language removes the burden of making them guess.
Put distance between yourself and lethal access. Hand over weapons, medications, vehicle keys, and anything else your despair could use. Do this before your mind starts bargaining for one exception.
Use safe physical movement. Walk with someone, use a treadmill in an occupied gym, or ride as a passenger while another person drives. Keep the body engaged until the first surge of adrenaline begins to fade.
Shrink time. Do not solve the next year. Commit to the next ten minutes. When those minutes pass, commit again. A lifetime may feel impossible while ten minutes remains survivable.
State the facts out loud. Say, “I am in acute grief. My thinking is distorted. I will not make an irreversible decision during this state.” The sentence may feel mechanical. Say it anyway.
Bring in professional emergency help. Call emergency services or a crisis line if you may act. If speaking feels impossible, send a message that says exactly where you are and that you are unsafe alone.
A person in crisis may resent every one of those steps. Despair wants privacy because privacy gives it control. It will claim that you are burdening people, embarrassing yourself, or creating drama. Those thoughts are part of the emergency. Ignore their fucking opinion.
Physical Tasks That Demand Attention
Acute adrenaline needs somewhere to go. The safest activities are repetitive, physically demanding, and done around other people when suicide risk is present.
A long, fast walk with a trusted companion forces the body to work while conversation and surroundings interrupt obsessive thought.
A stationary bike at a supervised gym burns energy without placing you behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.
Climbing stairs at a steady pace requires balance, breathing, and attention to each step. Use a public, well-lit location and remain with someone.
These are buffers, not cures. Their purpose is to carry the body through the period when impulse is strongest. Once the immediate threat recedes, grief still requires support, sleep, food, treatment, and honest human contact.
The Ironclad Rule
When pain reaches lethal intensity and you cannot find a reason to live, keep your body in safe motion and refuse to make the final decision. You are allowed to have no hope. You are allowed to feel destroyed. You are allowed to admit that the next hour looks impossible.
You are not required to believe that everything will become wonderful. You only have to recognize that acute despair is a compromised state. Delay its authority.
Ask yourself two hard questions. When life breaks apart, which physical routines can keep you moving without increasing the danger? Can you recognize the moment when grief has narrowed your vision so badly that the present looks permanent?
I could not answer those questions clearly while driving through Kentucky. I only knew that my hands kept correcting the wheel. Mile after mile, barrier after barrier, something inside me refused to complete the act.
By the time Nashville surrounded me, I had burned through a full night of suicidal momentum. I was running on empty in every possible sense. The car needed gas. My body needed rest. My mind needed a temporary place where it could collapse without killing me.
I followed the outer roads beneath the Tennessee sun, still without a real destination. The night had failed to finish me. I was exhausted enough to postpone finishing myself.
For that morning, postponement was life.