_𝓑𝓻𝓸𝓴𝓮𝓷_

Intro  No one tells you what it’s like to lose a sibling. No one tells you it feels like suffocating, like there’s a weight on your chest that never white subsides. I feel it every day. Sometimes it’s hard to breathe, hard to think, hard to understand. No one tells you how unimportant everything else seems in comparison. How the school gossip doesn’t phase you and how your idea of stress is light years beyond everyone else’s. No one tells you about the guilt. The what-ifs, the thinner you could’ve said, the questions you never asked. No one tells you about the moments you realize you didn’t know enough about her and about what she thinks and who she is. Or, who she was. No one tells you about the avoidance. It’s numbing. It’s easier to pretend nothing happened, to speak about her as if she’s still here or don’t mention her at all for fear of breaking down. No one tells you how overwhelmingly impossible it seems to try to imagine a time where this doesn’t hurt. To imagine a day where you don’t cry. To imagine what it’s like to feel whole again. No one tells you that when people say you’re strong, it makes you feel weak. That your strong exterior really comes from failure to face the pain and an assortment of unhealthy coping mechanisms. No one tells you how to cope, how to face a world without your little sister. No one shows you how to grieve without falling apart. No one tells you these things because there’s no warning for your sibling’s death. There are no cushions for the blow. No one expects to celebrate Christmas this year without her. Because no one expects to live the rest of their life without her. No one likes to hear that it’ll get better because really, that’s all they want. That’s all I want. That day is always someone in my mind, haunting me. The voices in my head telling me I could’ve done better, could’ve paid attention to the signs, how can I follow through with the guilt of knowing I’m the reason?