Forgetting Roman

{two}

{two}

                You need to live a normal life, Aspen. You need to go out and do the things that people your age do. You need to take it one day at a time. Do all the things a person does throughout the day. Get up, get dressed and go on with your day with a smile on your face. Think positive and try to regain some normality in your life. You’re young, beautiful, and smart. Your life is just beginning, enjoy it. Live life to its fullest, Aspen. Don’t give up so quickly on life just because a few things have gone wrong. In time, things will get better, again. Remember they did once before. Hope, Aspen. Have some hope. I’ll see you soon, sis.

                I love you.

                -Parker.

                I looked away from the letter that I held in my hands. My brother’s familiar penmanship sprawled across each line in dark black ink. It was dated a few weeks old, yet I hadn’t been able to open it until now.

                I was alone in my dorm room and had come across it again when I was cleaning my desk from useless papers. The thin envelope was stuffed underneath my Introduction to Psychology textbook and had fallen to the ground when I slid the book off to slide it on my bookshelf above my small desk.

                After a few minutes of silently staring it as it laid on the floor, I picked it up with a heavy sigh and tore it open. He hadn’t beaten around the bush with his letter in telling me that I needed to start being normal again. If anyone else would have told me that I would have snapped at them and told them that they didn’t understand; that it wasn’t that easy.

                But with Parker I couldn’t get myself to be angry at him. In our family he was the only one who I felt could understand what I was going through. Sure he didn’t understand from personal experience but he was open minded enough to listen and try to grasp what you were telling him.

               He never judged me when he would find me half past three in the morning sobbing in the bathroom with a blade in my hand and blood flowing out of the fresh cuts I had given myself. He never once told me I was crazy when I told him the voices in my head were telling me to end my life because no one cared whether I lived or not. He would care for me when I would stumble up the stairs drunk and high off my ass because alcohol and smoking weed was the only thing that would numb the emptiness I felt and suppress the voices in my head.

                He would reassure me day in and day out that people would care if I ended my life. He would hold me when breakdowns would keep me up until early morning. He would clean up my fresh cuts and tell me that I was safe- safe with him. And with his help, slowly the breakdowns became less frequent, and the urge to cut, binge, drink and smoke didn’t make itself known. He didn’t save me, no one could, but he helped me because he knew that I didn’t want to live like that anymore.

                And when he left for Iraq, I slowly fell into old habits again. It was a constant battle between giving up and fighting back. I spent many nights crying and fighting the urge to slice up my skin because the voices in my head kept saying I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t skinny enough, and that no one would care if I cut too deep and bled out.

                I spent countless nights fighting those demons in my head. I spent hours without end staring at a bottle of alcohol debating whether or not to drink it. I spent hours twirling the joint between my fingers and flicking my lighter on and off until I finally made a decision.

                I fought harder than I fought when I had Parker at my side helping me fight off the demons. And as the months passed, my fighting worked. It became easier to ignore the voices; it became easier to ignore the urges that clawed at me, begging to be fulfilled.

                Completely on my own this time, I got better. However, that was until Roman came along and slowly dragged me back down the black hole I had worked hard to climb out of.