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TW: suicide, drug use
"Are you gonna ask me how he died?" I asked.
"No." She said. "That's for you talk about when you're ready." Meghan said. She had ginger hair and so many freckles all over her body she looked like an autumn breeze. I took another drag of my cigarette. I felt like I had been crying for months. Meghan always sat there and listened to my shit. I was waiting for us to finally have the conversation. She never brought it up. She never even mentioned it. She loved him. She had loved him for years, since we were kids. My brother was a complete idiot. He never noticed. Or maybe he did notice, just didn't care enough. He was always tied up with someone. Rosa, Michael, Rosa again, this other guy called Brad. Who the fuck gets involved with a Brad? The answer is, my stupid fucking brother. I remember how Brad shattered his heart into a million pieces over and over again. Then my brother would come to me, we'd talk about how we hate men, binge watch movies about love, eat ice cream. My brother loved to self-destruct. He always ended up crying at the end of a love movie. Not in an "Aww, that's sweet." type of way where a single tear rolls down your cheek and you think to yourself: "That is a beautiful love story, the director did a great job". No. He would completely melt down and sit there and cry as if he had just lost a friend. I think he genuinely believed he was never going to be loved like that. That no one would ever care enough to leave their job for him, defy their mean father for him, drop everything and run away to the other side of the world with him. He would have these breakdowns every single time. "What type of man are you?" Mom used to ask him as she shook her head in disapproval. My brother would always tell her: "I'm not a fucking man mom. I'm a small blob of feelings. There's nothing manly about me." And then he'd continue crying. I never truly understood him. I don't think anyone ever did. I knew he loved attention. He was the most needy person on the planet and once he developed interest in someone, their attention had to be on him completely. He was popular at school. He had a million friends but to be honest I don't think he cared all that much for any of them. Take Meg, for example. She was basically family. We used to do everything together. She was always there for him whenever he needed anything. Sophomore year: he completely ditched her and wouldn't speak to her for months. Why? No one really knows. He never told her. Until one day he showed up to her house at three in the morning and said he needed a hug. I told Meg she shouldn't drop everything for him and that he doesn't care. She didn't listen. I guess there was something about my brother that made everyone love him. He once broke up his English teacher's marriage. She left her husband, so they could be together. A few days later he told her it wasn't fun anymore and never saw her again. There were all these shitty things about him. All these horrible things he did, the way he played people for the fun of it. I loved him never less. He was my twin brother and we were always so close. I think that is why I've been crying every single day ever since his death. He overdosed on April 17th. I was the one who found him in our living room. His lips were blue and his skin pale. He was a corpse by the time I got there. He had been dead for hours. Mom was at her night shift, dad was probably out cheating. My dog was sitting there next to his body, barking like crazy. God knows how long she'd been at it. I remember my knees giving away. I remember screaming at the top of my lungs. I remember crying and falling to the ground and burning my knees against the carpet. I didn't call anyone, text anything to anyone. I sat there in the corner of the living room and stared at my brother's corpse for hours, unable to do anything about it. Eventually my dad came home. There were hickeys on his neck and he smelled like perfume and alcohol. He rushed in to the living room, started screaming something, I think he might have been talking to me, yelling for me to call 911 or something I don't remember. Everything was blurry. I knew there was no point in trying to save him. He was dead. My favourite person in the world. My better half. My brother. Dead. Everyone calls his death a tragic accident but I like to call it what it is. Suicide. He sent me a text that night. He said: "I love you Leslie. Try to do better than I did." Truth is I was at a party that night. I was drunk. I was with someone. My phone was dead. I was out partying while my brother was killing himself in our living room. I'm the worst person in the world there's no doubt about that. Truth is I think my brother was bipolar. I think I might be too. He never got checked. Never took any medication. Nothing. He was expected to live through it. Through daily torture and emotional torment. Coming from within himself. His brain was trying to kill him and he was supposed to fight himself how? What control was he supposed to have over himself when he was the one purposely losing control? Of course there were times when he was happy. Maniacally happy. He'd sit and hysterically laugh at a blank wall for no reason. He once stole three cars, brought them home and painted them pink. He was proud of himself and showed everyone. Dad made him cut it out, took the cars apart and sold the parts. He did that type of shit all the time. And I was supposed to somehow do better? I was traumatised. Destroyed, completely devastated I couldn't get out of bed, let alone do better. Like what the fuck. "Do you know how selfish it was of you to leave me here with these people, you piece of shit?" I would tell my ceiling now and then. I didn't believe in god or life after death or anything. Even if I did, there was no chance my brother was in heaven. Even if he wasn't crazy and horrible he'd still be in hell for fucking boys as well as girls. Life is a strange thing. No matter what you do, no matter how good you are you're still not good enough. There's always something wrong with you. Not a single person on this Earth is one hundred percent good. I think even if there is a heaven it's probably empty. Maybe Hitler and Stalin and Franco have their own personal hell for the worst of the worst. The vip hell or something.
