A sample of Just Before Daybreak (A Life Lived Between Yesterday and Tomorrow)
Just Before Daybreak
A life lived between yesterday and tomorrow
Deanna Lorea
Thought Catalog Books — thoughtcatalog.com
Copyright © 2025 Deanna Lorea.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior written consent and permission from Thought Catalog.
Published by Thought Catalog Books®, an imprint of Thought Catalog, a digital magazine owned and operated by The Thought & Expression Co. Inc., an independent media organization founded in 2010 and based in the United States of America. For stocking inquiries, contact stockists@shopcatalog.com.
Produced by Chris Lavergne and Noelle Beams
Art direction and design by KJ Parish
Circulation management by Isidoros Karamitopoulos
Author biography written by Vaughn W. Hebron
thoughtcatalog.com | shopcatalog.com
First Limited Edition Print
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-965820-22-3
Table of contents
- Preface — 11
- Part 1: Suddenly — 15
- Part 2: Finally — 129
When you come to the end of self,
all that survives, all that matters, is unveiled.
— Deanna Lorea
“The pain of staying here will be worse
than the pain of starting over...”
Sometimes you need to take a few steps back in order to take more steps forward.
Preface
I couldn’t have predicted this arrival on my best day...
It’s cold. And not in the sense of temperature, but in the sense of departure. Something has left me and in its void, I feel cold. Just days ago I was planning for a new baby, dreaming of expanding life with a partner who departed without a goodbye less than an hour ago. It was a small fight. I left the house to breathe through the frustration and returned to an empty home. No sign of him anywhere. No shoes left by the door, no clothes hanging in the closet. No razor left on the bathroom counter. He left. How do you go from planning a future in your womb to barrenness? As I sit here on the porch overlooking the place where the last two years of my life developed, I’m not sure if I’m dreaming or vividly awake. My mind sifts through the timestamps of the last 48 hours and I cannot seem to pinpoint the exact moment that everything changed. It’s like that, change. It creeps up on you and before you know it, you’re sitting in the aftermath of what’s been a long time coming. The sun sets. I don’t think I’ve moved in awhile, definitely feel like I haven’t taken a breath in consecutive moments. Is this what dying feels like? Stillness. Lifeless while being alive. The little warmth the sun granted me now slowly disappears. It’s dark now and I’m still in the same position I started in on the porch floor. The same porch we used to laugh on, and randomly, I caught a glimpse of an eerie happiness.
What was that?
In the middle of the most devastating time of my life, I sat on a cold empty porch, and smiled. It didn’t feel like it came from me. In mere seconds I was overtaken by something else...
but what?
Who?
Then the coldness returned. A void, the kind of hollow emptiness that echoes for miles and miles. It’s the kind of emptiness that doesn’t seem to have an end. My eyes darted back and forth searching for an end to this cold pain inside me. At that moment I found myself wondering how this story would turn out. What’s on the other side of my world being turned upside down?
I felt like pennies being dumped from a purse. Scattered. I wondered how you can start planning for the beginning of something, only to be met by a swift end you didn’t see coming. I had begun to conceive in heart and mind well before the baby ever lived within me. And there I was in the very next moment, sitting at a funeral before the dream ever gave birth.
There are moments in life where you meet the end of a thing. There’s no warning. There’s nothing you can do to prepare for this moment, yet your whole life has prepared you to make it through. Sometimes a death is news to you, but the earth sings anthems of your victory. And though the road ahead seems treacherous, you’ll pull through, but not without dying first.
Ready or not, here it comes.
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