This Christmas

six

TRIGGER WARNING; SUICIDE ATTEMPT AND SELF HARM

It was almost as if each year his parents tried to make each Christmas worse for him. Year after year, dinner after dinner, morning after morning, they made an effort in grounding him.

As John grew older he sympathized with Jack, and tried to share his gifts and food with Jack, but as Jack grew older, his hatred only grew, and his resentment towards John too. 

The year had finally come. It was Jack's last Christmas as a teenager. Next year, on the first of January, he would be an adult. His bags had already been packed and his money had been saved, after years of selling his own clothes and working at the donut shop, he could finally afford to (kinda) live on his own. He had a place he was planning on renting. 

Maybe if he was away from his parents he would be happy. 

But that Christmas was the worst.

During dinner, his parents had told him that he was better off dead, that with all his bad grades and problems at school it would make everyone's lives better. 

And he tried, he really tried.

That Christmas he locked himself in the bathroom, and took one to many pills, and the razor cut the skin on his wrists smoothly.

But it was still not enough. 

John barged in and managed to get him to the hospital. His parents played happy family and promised to put him in therapy.

They never did.