' THE RAPTURE ' › D. SWING [ DISCONTINUED ]

viii.

It was the next day and I wasn't going to lie, it was eating me up to know that nobody had been trying to help this man. No wonder why he was so closed-off and angry, barely wanting to open up to anybody or feel as though he couldn't trust anyone. After all of these years, it was no way people around him bothered to speak to him about whatever was going on or else he wouldn't be on multiple medications for the same thing. He had Citaloram, Paroxetine, Venlafaxine, and Imipramine. Yet he didn't take any of them. I wanted to ask myself why but I already knew the answer. He didn't believe he had an problem. Maybe it wasn't necessarily a mental problem but he definitely had one, whether he wanted to admit it or not.

After he had left to do his daily routine to feed the animals, I went into his room and honestly had been there for quite some time, finding all sorts of hospital bills and brochures that covered information about depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. It looked as though he had been to the hospital multiple times and still hadn't bothered to actually take the medications, for whatever reason. Why keep going if you believe there's nothing wrong with you? It didn't make sense to me.

Standing in his closet, I reached up toward the top self, pulling down a box that was labeled 'Don't fuck with this', ignoring the handwritten message and taking the top off to see a stack of family photos, video tapes, and letters, furrowing my eyebrows as I lowered myself onto the floor, sitting Indian-style.

I had fallen across a picture of DeVantè and his two brothers. They looked to be around 4, 5, and 6.

I couldn't help but smile as I looked down at the photo as my mind wondered how they were as kids. Bad? Good? Honestly, all boys are bad so I wouldn't put it past them. Church kids or not. I giggled, shaking my head as I tucked the photo behind the stack in my hand, finding a picture of an even younger Dalvin and Derek standing next to each other, smiling from ear to ear.

I snickered at Dalvin, because he resembled as baby version of Carlton from Fresh Prince. Why does he have his shoulders hunched? What the hell...and where is DeVantè? I was a bit confused but decided to keep looking, finally seeing a picture of him wearing the same exact shirt but in a different angle of the living room and he was alone. He didn't seem to mind, though. He was smiling harder than ever and honestly, it was quite adorable.