Stagnant

Pessimism

I was whole once. I was happy once. I was alive once.

A year ago, before my life entered darkness and a void of numbness, I had a permanent smile, I had a best friend and a brother. But that changed.

Losing a brother who is also your best friend is one of the hardest things to ever come to terms with. Having someone who was always there, and someone whom you thought would be there for the rest of your life, and then suddenly they're gone... it hurts. Actually it's more than hurt. It's heart and soul breaking, it's insanity, it's depression and it's torture.

You know what's worse than losing a brother who's also a best friend?

Losing a twin.

Elliot was my twin brother, my best friend. A twin is so much more than a sibling. Twins share wombs, they grow up together and have a connection that normal siblings can only dream about. Of course some twins weren't like us, they weren't as close, especially the girl-boy twins but we were. Elliot and Elizabeth.

So many people asked us how we managed to live together, be in the same classes together in school and also stay best friends. It sounded unusual and ridiculous when we said we didn't fall out or get angry at each other but it was true. We had pointless arguments over the last bits of cereal in the box and who would ride shotgun but we didn't argue argue.

We shared a womb, we grew up together, we shared classes. We were twins, siblings, by force but friends by choice. Our closeness made other siblings jealous.

Losing a twin, losing a brother, losing a best friend is the same as losing a part of yourself. The devil himself ripped out half of my soul, heart, essence, life-force until I was nothing. I was half of something that was gone. I kept ringing his phone just to hear his voice, when I walked somewhere I kept looking to my left to see him only to realise that he wasn't there anymore.

I kept forgetting he was gone because how could he be gone? How could my twin, who was one of the main reasons for my existence on this pitiful planet, be gone? He was my best friend, he can't be gone. Surely if he died then the whole world would just stop... it would collapse in to rubble. But it didn't. Life went on.

It's impossible for him to be dead because if he was dead then I should be dead too, I couldn't live on a planet without my twin and yet... I was. I was living on a planet without him.

We were eighteen and at eighteen no one thinks about what to do if someone close to you dies. At eighteen we don't think about how we would survive without someone close to us because we just think they're going to be here forever, with us.

Elliot was gone and nothing could have prepared me for his departure.

You know what's worse than losing a twin?

Losing both parents at the same time.

"Life isn't fair." My eyes narrowed as his voice interrupted the silence in between us. I stared out of the window of his car, my eyes focused on the outside world that passed by in a blur.

I knew life wasn't fair, I could write ten freaking books about why life isn't fair. Whoever told anyone that life is fair is a fucking liar.

"Life is pretty shit when it wants to be. We can't control anything so why do people get so stressed about situations when they can't do anything about it?"