Growing up in a broken home was hard. Alcohol fueled drugs addicted parents were the “guardians” of my sister and I. But my story is not about them. This is more of a vent post and I’m using a throw away account. I cant keep living with myself. Especially not now, not after the repressed memory somehow came back.
My parents weren’t supportive and my father left when I was very young. My sister and I had different fathers but it made no difference to us. Our sisterhood was strong, and I loved my sister Mary more than anything. She was five years older than me and she was the one who raised me more than anyone else. Despite being a kid she took on the burden of raising another. She cooked for me, got me ready for school, etc. It was when she turned 16 that she changed, she was cold to me and indifferent- much like my mother. It hurt so bad to see her run off with friends and leave me behind after she promised she would never do such a thing.
She wouldn’t come home for days, and when she would she felt off- like something was wrong with her. I ignored it, just being happy that she was home. I was only 11, my young mind had trouble catching in that our life and family wasn’t normal. That I wasn’t normal. For year this continued and when I 13 I caught her and discovered why she had been so odd. She was sitting on the bathroom floor, needle still in arm, unconscious. Fear filled me and I remember running and crying in the phone to the 911 operator. To make it short, they came, narcaned her and called it a night. This situation became a pattern. I grew to know what my mother snorts and what my sister injects.
I was angry, angry that my sister, my Mary had chosen substances over me just like everyone else had. But still, I would brush her long chestnut hair and help her bathe after an overdose. One paramedic was kind enough to leave me a handful of narcan nasal sprays and taught me how to do it. This went on for a year, each time the overdose got worse. CPR and hospital visits became routine and I would scream, cry and beg for her to stop, to get better. Mary would sob into my arms and plead for forgiveness and , of course, I would forgive her. I thought each time she truly meant it.
When I was 15 I had broke. My mental illness only got worse, my depression and anxiety were at a peak and my agoraphobia was just setting in. It was around that time that a part of me just wished she would die, to save me the pain of brining her back over and over again just to lose her. It was a Wednesday when I came home from school. I was exhausted from everything and everyone. In all honestly I wanted to die, but the small hood that my sister would get better kept me going. I cant express this enough, she was all I had, my only friend, and the reason to live. She never cared I was socially inept or a little off. She loved me, and I her. I shouted for her that I was home, but when I saw the kitchen was a mess, that our spoons were missing and when I saw our grandmothers expensive collection of dolls were gone I was so angry I couldn’t contain myself.
I walked through the house yelling, ready to slap and pull her hair and beat sobriety into her if I could. I was shouting that she better be dead or not home because when I got to her i didn’t know if I could stop the years if isn’t uo rage and betrayal. When I saw the bathroom door was shut I knew. I tried the handle. Locked. I kicked and screamed at the door. Wishing that she was dead, wishing I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. I heard a few heaves in the other side of the door, ones i call deaths breath. It was the sound of choking on air when the action of breathing because too much for the body to do. Eventually the old rusted lock came loose. The door flew open, and I saw her.
Her long hair covered her angled down face, she sat, slumped, against the bathtub. My heart dropped, and I muttered a “I didn’t mean it.” Before I dropped to my knees and crept closer. Down on my knees I reached for her wrist and when there was no pulse I reached for her face and turned it upwards. Mary’s hair covers her face, save for her right eye and her cheek. That right eye was open and stared directly at me. I saw myself in her eye and immediately flinched away and scrambled to the other side the of bathroom. Her head fell but from where I sat it was like she never stopped looking at me. The hair, the eye, pale hands laid before me.
The last thing she heard me say to her was “I hope you die” as I banged in the bathroom door. She did, she did die. I was left alone and my mother found me in a daze in the bathroom. She made a Martyr out of herself for being some mourning mother while I felt myself slipping. All I did was sleep, I didn’t eat or drink and when I did it came right back up. Sometimes, when I walk into that bathroom I see her. Even in the dark, she’s there, even in my dreams she’s there. I cant see her face. Only that single eye staring at the little sister that wished her dead.
I have tried to cut the memory out of me, scarred limbs and bitten lips is all I am now. I cannot forgive myself.