Sometimes I wish I’d been the one to disappear.
I don’t want to be here. I can’t be here.
It’s the mantra I’d chanted over and over, at too many stages in life. The words were a razor-thin shard of glass against my wrist, close enough to create a burning pain but not close enough to sear through my purple, pulsing veins.
I picked at a green ball of fuzz on the edge of my tattered quilt, my fingers deftly pulling at the stubborn sign of wear. My back against the headboard of my bed, I thought about sitting there all day like I had so many times before, lost in the little piece of both heaven and hell I wallowed in so frequently.
She deserved it. She started it.
After all that time, after all those years, I’d come to that conclusion.
It wasn’t my fault because she deserved it. She started it.
They pushed me to it. All of them pushed me to it.
Still, despite the years that had passed, I couldn’t let it go. They wouldn’t let me. I danced in a limbo-like state of the past, of the present and of a future of unending days of forced penance.
My chest burned as I spun the fuzz I’d plucked from the blanket over and over between my fingers. I stared blankly at the wall as I did, wondering if I could sit in my desolate room until I disappeared, wondering how long until they’d notice.
Weeks? Months? Years? Would they even notice at all?
Who was I kidding, though?
Six years. That’s how long I’d really been gone. Six years they’d continued mourning her, or more accurately worshipping her. Her death only heightened their love for her, their reverence. It only detracted from their feelings for me.
Her death hadn’t lifted me up to a new status in the family. Instead, I was even more overshadowed by her silhouette, by her ashen shell, by her spectre that haunted the house via memories, photographs and what-ifs.
She was dead, but she still commanded more respect than I did. It hurt to be second fiddle to a skeleton.
I rocked back and forth on my bed like I’d done for so many days, so many nights. I’d grown accustomed to being alone, had even perhaps grown to accept it.
But my days of being a prisoner in that house were coming to an end. I was getting older, and opportunities would present themselves soon. I just had to hang in there. I just had to survive. And then I’d get my chance to be free, to rise up, to be noticed. I would command respect. I would command to be noticed.
No one would ever again ignore me. No one would get the better of me. No one would keep me down.
My chest burned with what, I didn’t know.
Someday, I told myself, someday I’d find someone to cling to, someone to notice me.
Someday, I’d find someone who didn’t see me as second best. And when I found that someone, I’d clutch them so tightly, so fiercely, that they wouldn’t have a chance to let go of me. They wouldn’t have a chance to smash me into ruins on the floor, scattered pieces centred around a sanctuary for someone else.
Someday, it would be my turn to be at the top.