Rebecca was close to death, and there was nothing I could do.
And to me, life always feels like that. Always surrounded by people close to death, close to harming themselves, close to suicide. I’ve witnessed so, so many instances of my own sister Leah ideating on suicide, either wanting to give up on her painful existence, or crushed by the knowledge that others have given up on her. Many times, we’ve been suicidal at the same time, me trying to steer my brain away from plans of death while also desperately attempting to do the same for my sister. These are amoung the most dangerous days of my life, where death seemed insistent on having the both of us. It unnerves me now to ask, if I were tasked with repeating those days, would I be able to survive again?
But there I was again. There we were, me and my partner Jonathan. In the usual way, he got a phone call in the middle of things — this time, relaxing with videos of the recent tornados down south, recorded by amateurs on the ground with their phones. I noticed the sound of the call before he did. “Oh shoot,” he said after realizing who it was. A spontaneous call from his sister rarely meant things were okay.
They spent hours together on the phone in my small apartment’s bedroom behind a closed door — an attempt to avoid me overhearing their private conversation. I blared a podcast, then music, then rain sounds through my over-ears headphones - but still I couldn’t stop myself from hearing the desperate tone behind her voice.