Care For Me ✔️

8

L E O

Most days I just want to everything to end.

The numbness that takes over my body on a daily basis, it holds me back from actually living. Anxiety grips me tight within its clutches and suddenly, t's like my body is playing against me. My breathing turns erratic, throat closing in on itself whilst my chest aches as if I've taken a thousand bullets to the heart. And by the end of it, I can't breathe.

It makes no sense. I have no reason to be anxious or sad, so why am I? I haven't had a hard life, or maybe I have but hasn't everyone? Life isn't meant to be constant sunshine, as my brother used to say; you can't admire rainbows without rain. And I really love rainbows, as long as the colours are worth the storm.

That's the problem, though. I don't know if the constant sadness is worth it. It sounds selfish, most kids have it way worse than I do. I have a good home, good school, good grades. I don't get bullied, I have friends... kinda. I have my brothers... kinda.

I have so many things that other people would kill to have, and yet... it isn't enough. Despite having so many things that should make me happy, numbness is almost always what I feel.

I don't remember when the depressive episodes first started. My guess is that it's always been there, laying dormant until it slowly began to creep to the surface. I suppose that's what happens when you lose the other half of yourself before you've had the chance to learn your own name.

When I was two years old, I lost my parents. I was so young that it didn't affect me as much as it affected my brothers. At least, I didn't think it did. What did affect me, though, was that the same day our parents were murdered in cold blood, I lost my twin sister, Lily.

I don't remember the day at all, or Lily for that matter. All my memories are based on the stories my brothers have recited.

Our parents were on their way back from a doctors appointment with Lily when they were carjacked at a red light. Both of them shot and killed within seconds of each other, their bodies left on the concrete like roadkill. As for Lily? No one knows. The police had found traces of her blood in the backseat but never recovered her body. She just vanished and, after years of investigating and searching for answers, the case went cold.

And still, to this day, the person or people responsible have never been caught.

My brothers and I have no clue what happened that day. We have no idea why someone would want to murder our parents and steal or possibly even kill our sister. Was it premeditated? Or was it just a case of wrong place at the wrong time?

Questions, there's so many questions that we may never get the answers to.

There's a sense of closure when it comes to our parents, or there is for me at least. As for my brothers, I couldn't say for sure. Despite not knowing why they died or who choose to take them away from us. At least we know they're dead. At least we know they're at peace. We had a funeral, we buried them, they have a grave and a stone and a place to rest.

Lily doesn't have that.

She might never have that. She could've been decomposing in a ditch for the last ten years and none of us would be any the wiser.

Or she could be alive. She could be living.

It's a stupid thought. Stupid hope.