The chaplet has finally found a new home.
In the 1980s I had a high school sweetheart, called Esther. She was religious and one day she left her chaplet on my desk without either of us realising it. A few days later we had a car accident. She died and I lived. When I got home after the tragedy, I saw the chaplet lying on my desk. For many years I was suffering and agitated, trying to find explanations for why it had happened like that. I had a terrible sense of guilt.
Two years later I went to the fire station of the brigade that saved my life. I wanted to join them. Luckily, I was accepted and I became a firefighter, saving lives every day.
I never wanted to drive a car, though it was not me who was driving that day. Fourteen years later, life persuaded me to learn to drive because of my job. I put the chaplet on the rear-view mirror and it protected me on my journey. 
My recent girlfriend, Kriszta, asked me one day why this was in the car as I am not religious. First I could not tell her the story. I could not talk to anybody about this story. But during those years stress and suppression were making me sick inside. When it became unbearable, I looked for help. In therapy I managed to overcome the sense of guilt and I’ve been a new man ever since. I could tell Kriszta the story of the chaplet. 
I have closed down my past and now I am concentrating on the future. I gave up firefighting after ten years, found a new job and now I am leaving home for a new country, for a new life. I sold my beloved car and was searching for a new, remarkable home for the chaplet. Last year we stumbled across a place in Zagreb, somewhere the chaplet can find rest and peace and tell its story. 

A chaplet

We grew so icy with each other those few days; what I thought might allow us to thaw the growing cold between us only solidified both our feelings. As you watched me scrape the ice off the car at the airport while you sat planning your family New Year's Eve, we both knew it was the end. 

Nothing was right for you in Marrakech, nor with the plan I'd painstakingly and lovingly created for us, but perhaps we were both ultimately too inflexible and too selfish. 

I accept my mistakes though the way you cruelly laid out my catalogue of faults still weighs heavy; my self-worth shattered. You never would acknowledge your own flaws though. Months of being fully present for you, limping from one family crisis to the next, trying to accommodate your needs, and taking on board all your interests. None of this - or the strain it placed on 'us' - was ever acknowledged. I thought there would be more grace, understanding and space for me when I needed it, but there was only space for you - I wish you'd been honest about that from the start; with me and with yourself. 

Hardest in all of this is realising that the person I fell in love with - and dreamed of building a future with - didn't exist, leaving me questioning my own judgement. 

But now, finally, I've cracked it and I am letting the illusion of you go. 

A chaplet

Freezing Point