text: My hand trembled as I gripped my key tighter, hovering a few inches from the keyhole. My mind was racing. How can I face them? What will I say when I see them? They have been dealing with it since I got the call, but I just can’t. They were always stronger than me, Why am I finding this so hard? My heart was pounding, my skin began to heat up. How can I leave them like this? How can I not face this when they can? The key plunges into the door and makes a distinct clunk. Within no time at all I am inside the house racing up the stairs. I pause on the landing. I can hear them from the other side of his bedroom door. The sobbing tears a hole in my heart. I feel my anxiety spiking inside of me. Every inch of my body is overtaken by fear. I can’t go in, I just can’t. Before I can decide the door bursts open, and my sister is standing in the doorway. Her makeup stains her face, obvious tear marks cover her cheeks. Her eyes are overflowing with tears. Her lips are trembling as she plunges into my arms. I can do nothing but stroke her hair and burst into tears myself. I grip her tighter as she leans into me. After a few moments, that feel like a lifetime, she pulls away and walks past me. She’s heading to the bathroom to grab some towels, I rush into the room, having absorbed some of her courage. I freeze when I see him. He is lying so peacefully on the floor, with my parents crying over him. Dad is trying to console Mum, keeping her head pressed tightly to his chest as they both cry waterfalls. Blood is pouring from his head, but it is distinctly calm, his heart having stopped moments prior. The gun lays a few feet away from his hand. I feel like I’m in a nightmare. I’d had nights in my past where I had imagined what I would feel in this exact scenario. Most of the time it was some sort of dread. Other times disbelief. But facing the real feelings here and now I realised I was wrong. The unimaginable pain I felt in that moment resonated into my being. Having entered that room I knew I wouldn’t be leaving it, at least that version of me. I felt all the life drain from within me. How could I keep going after facing this. How could I live without him. How could I think about him without seeing this. I felt pure anger bubbling up inside me. How could they do this to me? Letting me see him like this. How could he do this to me? How could he be so selfish to take the easy way out? The amount of times I thought of doing the same. The times I sat with him, all night, keeping him alive. The late night walks. The patient sitting on the beach. Always being on the other end of the phone no matter what time of night. How had I not been able to stop him from doing this? I had well and truly failed him and myself. How could I go on without him? My anxiety became overwhelming. I had never felt like this. The nothingness became everything. How could there be a tomorrow when the world has ended today? What was my next step? I had been stuck frozen to the spot, my legs became weak. I collapsed and began wailing. By this point my sister had returned after an eternity, she frantically began mopping up the blood, pressing it against his head, trying to save him? Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe he was still alive, his heart had just slowed down and there was still chance. As quickly as my hope began to skyrocket it was quickly crushed. Snap out of it. You know that is not possible. You know he is gone. Comfort her. As her frustration grew I reached out and forced her hands to become still. I cupped them in mine and then pulled her in, as she began to join my parents in trying to fill the room. Maybe drowning us would help make the pain go away? As foolish as it sounded it was comforting. I’m not crazy because we are all feeling the same thing. Or at least we should be. The numbness became too hard to push away. It’s easy. I can’t be devastated if I don’t feel anything. Why don’t more people do this? Oh, people do this all the time. Too many in fact. He did. I know he did. I can’t count the times we were enjoying ourselves, where hope seemed to be growing in him and then it would just wash away as quickly as the ocean’s tide. That numb feeling is powerful. I know the alcohol helped him but only in numbing the pain further. I felt how much harder it was for him the last time we spoke. The suffering dripped off of every sentence. The pain was in every syllable. He couldn’t carry on and now I began to know how hard he felt it. When not wanting to be alive is easier than living your life how messed up is that. How is that fair to him? To us? He didn’t take his own life, he took all of ours. It’s been five years since that day and every day has become a burden since. I feel my life began to mimic his own. The pain. The sorrow. The drinking. My sister’s creativity had died that day. Once a renowned painter, she couldn’t lift another brush. Not just from the pain of losing him but the pain from losing all control in her body from a car accident, after she tried to end her own life about a year after losing him. A year after losing him. How long ago that feels. My parents couldn’t handle their grief and became shut-ins. I know they miss him and what their lives used to be. What all our lives used to be. As I finished off another bottle my mind focused on statistics. He had just become another statistic. So had she. How can they have been reduced to something so simple and inhumane? How can my life feel so inhumane? How can I go on? I felt the pain from that day more so than ever. Well more so than every day other than that day. I thumbed my key again. I hadn’t used it since that day. I could barely look at it, I had only just found it today while digging through a drawer looking for a bottle opener. My hand gripped it hard and I plunged it again, this time into my arm. I dragged it hard and deep all the way up my forearm. I lost sight of it as my arm turned red. After a few moments I felt light headed and my vision faded. I slipped into the darkness. I let it absorb me. I disappeared. Another statistic. At least I was with my brother again. He looked happy. At least, I think he was.