In, what looked like, a perfect house with, what looked like, the perfect family lived a little boy named Levi. He was a nice boy, loved music, loved school. He was such a beautiful boy. You loved him with all your heart. His blue eyes were oceans; he could see you but you never knew all of him. He could barely make complete sentences but they sounded like symphonies to you. You talked to him just about every day, as much as you could, really. He used to run home from school everyday. You never really understood why he had to run home. He didn’t have anything here. It was like he was racing something. But this isn’t a story about Levi. It’s not a story about a new beginning for someone and they all live happily ever after. This story is about the day you killed yourself.

It was a gloomy Monday morning. The windows were caked with the gray sky. The color that your eyes screamed at and your eyes were screaming, alright. Louder than ever. You wanted to scream just as loud but you couldn’t because your brother, Levi, was sitting across from you. When you looked at your little brother, you saw it. Happiness. You saw the gray fall off the windows and the sun was shining. The kind of shining that made your eyes sing when they looked up. You only saw this when you looked at him.

But your mom walked in. You only turned your head for a second! But when you looked back, it was gone. The gray was back and your eyes were screaming but life goes on. You sat there waiting for Levi to be done eating. So you could walk him to school. It was the highlight of your day because you could be happy for that thirty-minute walk. It was the only time you were happy to be honest. Once that was over, you had nothing. When you and him walked to school, you always went through almost the same dialogue everyday.

“How are you doing, sissy?” Levi would ask. It’s like he knew something was wrong but he couldn’t connect the dots in this big puzzle of depression.

“I’m doing well, thanks for asking! How are you doing, bud?”

“I’m just fantastic! Today, Ms. Stewart said we’d get ten EXTRA minutes of recess!!”

“That’s so exciting!”

Then Levi would just ramble on and on about how excited he was to go to school. It was the most innocent happiness. He didn’t have a care in the world. You wish you were like that. When you and him said your goodbyes, it brought tears to your eyes because you knew this was the last time you would see him. He still had the biggest smile on his face. But for some reason it seemed to shine brighter when he wasn’t around you. The smile on his face as you and him said goodbye shined as bright as gold but the smile on his face when he saw his friends was as bright as the sun.

You don’t have any friends. All of them have abandoned you, really. Apparently, you’re too clingy and annoying for anyone to ever want to spend time with. They don’t really see that part of you at first but it’s always there. You can always tell when they start to notice because their texts become less frequent or condense to a simple “k” or “yeah”. You keep asking them what’s wrong and they say that nothing is wrong but you know you’re the problem. You can never seem to hold down a friendship for more than two months. You think you just care about people way too much. You try to shut it down but then it just makes things worse.

You got home from walking Levi and prepared yourself for school. You stared into the mirror. You examined every single centimeter on your face. Your cheeks were puffy because you had been crying the night before. You had pimples in the creases on the sides of your nose where all the water had collected. Your eyes were small and terrified of the person you had become. You couldn’t help but try to pull a smile out of your pocket and hope for the best.

You applied your black eyeliner that you could never seem to do right. You mean every other girl seemed to be able to do it just fine but yours was never quite right. Your hair was a mess (like always). You tried to straighten it but it always got frizzy. You put on mascara but it was too clumpy. So you did your best to unclump it by using a toothbrush but it made it even worse. You eventually give up on it because nothing could disguise the worthlessness that you embodied. Your clothes were average. You were too insecure to wear anything revealing. So you settled on your nasty blue jeans and torn up field hockey shirt. You always wore a scarf that felt like a rope around your neck because it reminded you that you were in charge of your life. You knew it would eventually give you the strength to end it all.

Your next-door neighbor would always walk with you to school. He was really sweet but you could tell he didn’t actually like you. He was popular and you were insignificant. He was the moon and you were the dullest star in the sky. He always seemed to be looking at something else. You bet he could tell you had been crying but he never said anything. So you and he walked down the street like deer caught in headlights. You were startled at anything that came your way. Sometimes it seemed that he was like you. He wanted to die just as much as you did. You saw a look in his eyes that reminded you so much of your own. You never had much to say to him because you didn’t want to mess anything up.

You and he approached your school. He always went left through the doors and you always went right. His friends were always waiting for him at the door just like Levi’s did. It only made you feel lonely because you walked alone to your locker. Everyone had their groups or cliques or small group of friends and then there was you. Every once in a while, you’d occasionally hear “Hi!” in the hallways but you were always surprised they were talking to you. So you didn’t have enough time to say it back before they submerged back into the conversation with their friends. Eventually, it was like clock work:

1. Bell rings 2. Go to class 3. Sit in back 4. Keep your mouth shut 5. Don’t make eye contact 6. Bell rings 7. Get up 8. Keep your head down. 9. Repeat steps one through eight five times 10. Go to lunch 11. Try to fit in 12. Stay quiet 13. Look at your phone 14. Pretend you’re texting. 15. Repeat steps one through eight another two times.

By the end of the day, you only felt worse. You always walked out of school with tears in your eyes. This time the tears were different. Instead of kissing your cheeks and reassuring you everything was going to be alright, they were whispering goodbye. Your next-door neighbor always met you at the door to walk you home. But you ran passed him this time. He called for you to stop and wait up but eventually he gave up.

            (You always pictured that when that day would come, he’d run after you. He’d save you. He’d see you crying and he’d comfort you. Maybe you’d stay. But of course, that didn’t happen. You always got your hopes up about everything.) You looked back and he was just standing at the door. He wasn’t running after you. He was just standing there. He looked almost dumbfounded. He once again looked like a deer caught in headlights. But his friends quickly caught up to him and he looked away. So you turned around and kept walking with your head down.

            Your house was in sight by the time you stopped counting sidewalk cracks and looked up. You just started running because you knew it was time. You slammed the door shut and considered your options:

You could throw yourself off the balcony. You could hang yourself off the balcony. You could take all your sleeping pills. You could take all the pills. You could stab yourself with the biggest knife in the kitchen, etc.

After going through hundreds of thousands options, you finally settled on hanging yourself. You went into the garage and found the sturdiest rope in there. You looked up how to make a noose online, which, surprisingly, wasn’t very hard to do or find. You tied one end to the pillar on the balcony and put the noose tight around your neck. It was quite comforting because it felt just like your scarf. You were ready to jump. You took a deep breath and stepped up onto the banister. You were smiling because you knew the misery was going to end (you was never afraid of suicide, you were only afraid of what would happen if you failed). You carefully took one foot off the bannister and held it out in front over the abyss below. Slowly, you released your other foot and then you were falling. You stared at the dark ceiling as the light starts to fade. You whispered Levi’s name one last time before you were gone.

When you woke up, you were in heaven or somewhere like that. There was one thing you knew for sure, it wasn’t a hospital. You sighed with relief. You looked down below at your lifeless body. You looked peaceful and at rest for once. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Levi sprinting from the bus stop. Levi walked in and saw your inanimate body. He stretched out his little arm, tugged on your pant leg and whispered your name. He pulled and pulled and pulled for hours and hours and hours. He started screaming and crying for you.

“Why aren’t you saying anything back, sissy? SISSY? STOP PLAYING! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! PLEASE!? IT’S NOT FUNNY ANYMORE.”

Eventually your nasty jeans ripped up the side and little Levi fell to the floor. He just laid there. He started whimpering like a dog that couldn’t find his owner.

            The next sequence of events was quite blurry. You remember your parents came home and tore your brother from your leg. Your parents called the police and they took you down. The police told them you were pronounced dead on arrival. Then it all went dark.

            You kept an eye on Levi for days and noticed something quite strange. He never smiled anymore. And that’s when you understood how much you meant to him. You sat with him during breakfast, now he sits alone. You walked him to school, now he walks alone. You kept him company when he got home, now he’s alone. It wasn’t until that moment when you realized he ran home for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Then there’s a pair of us!”

~Emily Dickinson