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There's no comfort in knowing you're alive. It's not a reassuring thing to wake up every morning and know that you'll have to endure another day of this, because for others they would sing praise for a new day, but you, you are broken. You have been since you were young. It's because you were the one that came home early that day—not your mother, not your sister, not anyone else but you. You were the one to enter your father's study and see him with that college student, a fistful of her dark hair wrapped in one hand and the other digging into her flesh as he bent her over his desk.
He told you that it was a secret—a secret between you and him alone. He thought you wouldn't say anything because you were young, but he should've known better. You told your mother as soon as she came home. You told her about the pretty girl and the way that your father had rammed into her—of course, you didn't fully understand, but you told her the parts that you did. You knew that this should have been important, but she just brushed you off. There wasn't anything in her eyes that suggested she cared. She had known. She told you to go wash up for dinner and it was never spoken of again.
That was where it really began. You saw something you shouldn't have and that stayed with you always. When you were older, you understood. And when your mother killed herself, you were the one to find the body. Then you found the paperwork on the dresser—your father had filed for divorce. You didn't understand it (and you still don't). Your mother turned a blind eye to infidelity but divorce was where she drew the line. That's what fucked you up so badly in the first place, this twisted version of love that'd you'd seen play out. But you can't blame your addiction on your father's infidelity and your mother's complaisance. Some part of you was always hardwired for this. But that's the hard part to dissect, to pull apart the lies from the truth, to understand which narrator is reliable.
Here is the truth (or the only truth that matters): you are not human anymore. You can tell because the little signs of life are absent. All you do is lie in bed and stare at the ceiling—everything else seems to difficult, too foreign to your aching body. You hunger for the same substance that has been poisoning you. It consumes you, kills you slowly. Snow doesn't fall the same anymore. It doesn't make you happy anymore—not like it used to. Nothing makes you feel that way. It's just crystallized water that melts into your clothes, soaking into your skin and freezing your arteries. That's how you feel everyday now. Like everything is colder, and you can't stand having frost-bitten fingers and numb cheeks. You want to feel whole again, but you can't remember how to get there.
And it's not that you haven't tried before. You've tried countless times to sober up and be a version of yourself that isn't such a disappointment, but it always ever ends in you being a burden on the only ones who have ever loved you. So you learn not to ask for help, you learn not to seek wellness because you're better off this way. They might worry about you but they will never have to be with you—sit in your presence and see you for what you are, stripped naked and vulnerable, the purest form of yourself and the most ugly.
So these days you are catatonic, a passenger in your own body. It is not your own, and as if on auto-pilot, the ritual it repeats goes like this: wake up, shoot up, shut down. That is: wake up in whatever apartment or alley you'd been in the night before. Think back to the events of that night; ignoring the copious amounts of calls from your sister and stick the needle into your arm like you're a nursing infant and its your mother's tit. Then you'll repeat this process again—maybe in the shadows of a dark street or an abandoned building that reeks of rotten eggs—but you won't care because the only thing on your mind is your next high. And then the world fades to black and you like it better this way. You think this nothingness might suit you better. It's what you deserve.
But tonight will be different. You've just ended a phone call with your sister and there is hope. She is left with the promise that you will try this time, try to get better. But you are left with a hollowness because you have lied to her just as always. Instead of heading to her apartment, you walk down the dark, dirty streets that have held your body every night while you shoot up in some alley. You enter apartment 2B where there's a woman slumped in the corner, a needle in her arm and eyes rolled back into her head. More bodies line the apartment, filled to the brim with drugs but still breathing—if only barely.
When the sun rises they will be gone, but not you. Your body will stay there, forgotten. Your hands have minds of their own. They know the process; dump the powder into the spoon, hold the flame beneath it, transfer to a needle, and enjoy. You will only watch as your body tries to kill you. You are not in control anymore—you never have been. The belt constricts around your arm, tight enough that the veins become protruding and when the needle pierces your skin you don't even wince. It's a welcomed feeling. Every inch of your body feels the way it courses through your bloodstream. Letting yourself drop to the floor, you'll be half dead and half alive.
And you'll think of your sister; how she let you sleep on her couch and how she saved your life on the nights where you were on the cusp of death. And that's not just in a metaphorical sense. You'll remember the hazy memories of her fingers down your throat as the bile rises up and out comes all of the pills that you tried so hard to swallow. And how she held you on that cold tile floor, her arms wrapped around you, lips pressed to your temple as the wetness on her cheeks reaches yours. You couldn't stop the flood of tears that night—not because you'd almost died, but because you had caused her this much pain. Because you had become a burden that she'd bear readily.
That's why you decided that you didn't want this for her. To always be taking care of you like a child, pulling you away from whatever ledge you've found yourself on.
It's the last thing that you think of with the poison coursing through your veins. Lying on the floor and staring up at the ceiling in that dingy little apartment. There's a baby crying in the room over and sirens can be heard outside, but your mind is distorted and you think you can see God looking down upon you. But your sister has never believed in anything other than you, and you've only ever believed in her—though as history has shown, it wasn't enough. Because you're still here with a needle in your arm and death flowing through your body.
You're glad that she won't be here to see you like this. Convulsing on the floor with foam at your mouth like a rabid dog. You feel like you're on fire, burning up from the inside out. It travels through your body, finding a home in your head. Your brain's on fire and you can't even utter out a single word. You want to say her name, think of her one last time. The only thing that's ever been good to you, good for you. But you can't, so the last name on your lips as you enter into the silence is hers.
She loved you completely. And you loved her the same. But that doesn't mean anything now, because you are gone and she is left to pick up the pieces, just as it always was. She is alone and you are the one that left her.
