Going through low points throughout your lifetime can be extremely difficult and sometimes (most times) feel impossible to get through.
Personally, my low point was losing my first love. The process of losing someone so special, loved and close to you is the worst feeling in the world; there are no words to describe the emotions and feelings behind it. But no matter what that low point in your life may be, there’s a common thread that ties us all — the same feeling of loss and loneliness.
Let me start from the beginning of this journey.
My name is Josie Muncaster and on April 22, 2012 I started dating a wonderful guy — it was my first serious/real relationship.
Matthew was the happiest, nicest, loving, caring, sensitive, and kindest boy I have ever met. He was incredibly unique and there is no one quite like him. He was very quirky and had a strange sense of humour but he always had a way to make ANYONE smile. He had the ability to make anyone laugh no matter how their day was going or what they were going through in their life. To have that kind of superpower is very special in and of itself.
We spent almost every second of everyday either with each other or talking to each other. In the year and five months we dated I can honestly say we never had a serious fight about anything.
Sure there were arguments about little things but we always sat down and said, “Okay, we just need to talk and resolve this.” I guess that’s what made our relationship special. We never let anything stand in the way of us being together, so we chose to find ways to move past harder moments. We made each other the happiest we’d ever been in our lives.
Matt and I have so many amazing memories together. Our future was something that was ours and we planned it as such. We wanted to do lots of traveling and skiing. We wanted to move out to BC (Matt’s happy place and paradise). We wanted to someday get married and start a family. We wanted to have a few cats and lots of pugs. We just wanted to spend the rest of our lives together because it felt meant to be.
We wanted a lot of things, but this all changed on August 29, 2013.
The morning of August 30th, at 5:30am to be exact, I was woken up by my parents. I could hear their words, but I didn’t get it. I was told my Matthew had passed away the night before. My joy, my love, my happiness, the one I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with — that Matthew, the one with the ginger hair…my Matthew was gone.
I remember hearing the words and thinking: “This is just a nightmare and I’m just going to wake up from it and he’ll be here in a minute hugging me again.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. After a few minutes I realized this was real. I felt numb. The tears poured down my face and I couldn’t stop screaming. I was reacting but I didn’t really know how. I didn’t know what to feel or what I was even feeling.
Everything was just frozen inside me.
This is something you hear about in the news, this isn’t something that happens to you. You never expect it to happen to you.
The enormity of what happened only partially hit me in that moment, it wasn’t until later that it would really sink in.
Losing someone so young to a drug overdose shatters my heart.
Because of my past, I had many long talks with Matthew about how I’m against drugs. They’ve played a huge negative role in my life and I was comforted when he promised he wouldn’t go near them — that he wouldn’t hurt me in that way.
But he did. He let his curiosity get the best of him. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong person. I know people make mistakes and that they aren’t perfect. It’s a part of being human. But actions have consequences; it’s why I try to think before acting and why I consider all the avenues, when possible.
I’m hoping my blog posts on Too Damn Young can do for someone what Matthew did for me. Even in the worst of moments, he was able to bring out the best, and strongest, in me.
I know he’s my angel watching over me now. I know that he’s up there skiing his heart out. He’s by our — mine, his family, his friends — side in spirit and in our hearts. We’ll never lose that.
I miss him more than anything in this world, but I know he’d want me to stay strong and to continue his legacy of spreading happiness and giving hope to others. It’s exactly what I intend to do.
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