#cannot be replaced

In honor of National Suicide Prevention Week, I'm dedicating this one brief post to someone whom I love more than I can possibly describe, and who has made such an impact on my life that one little note, tossed out into cyberspace, will never, ever do her justice.  This one's for my big sister.

She left for college a few weeks ago.  Miles and miles away.  In a dorm with a girl I've never met; in a city where she has so many more opportunities than our small-town home could ever give her.  She graduated a few months ago with honors, and when she made her salutatorian speech I sat down in the pit where the band was waiting to play Pomp And Circumstance and I watched her and thought about how extraordinarily beautiful she was.  And how amazing that is, especially considering that if you'd told me two years ago that my big sister would graduate second in her class right after her best friend, that she would be driving her boyfriend and me to New York state, singing to the radio and laughing at our jokes, or that she would be running her first half-marathon in a matter of days, I would have slapped you and told you that your joke wasn't funny.

Two years ago, my sister as a zombielike shell of a girl hollowed out by medications that she hated so passionately she would hide them under her tongue and throw them away when my mother wasn't looking.  When she was on the antidepressants, she slept constantly, she missed school, she wouldn't eat.  She wasted away.  I remember looking at her one day and realizing how fragile she looked, all sharp angles and violent bones pressing through her skin.  Really pale and really skinny and corpselike.  And when she wasn't on them, we would stumble across bloodied bits of gauze on the bathroom counters.  We would find her immersed in brilliant, terrifying poetry that talked about death like it was a vacation spot.  She hated her meds.  She hated her psychiatrist.  I think, sometimes, she even hated us.  

For a very long time, I woke up every morning and prayed to a very silent God that I wouldn't lose my sister that day.  Each night when I went to bed I lay awake and stared at the ceiling, paralyzed with fear, and when she was finally deemed stable enough to be left home by herself, I lived in terror of the moment when she would be gone.  I expected it to happen.  I was horrified by the idea, but I knew how it looked.  I knew--I'd read books --how easy it would have been for her to end it all.  Sometimes, I swear she wanted to.  

Meanwhile, I lived in this silent, stifled dark that didn't go away with daylight.  When I was cast as the understudy-lead in the school musical, it only made me more miserable.  At home, my sister had been the one member of my family who had taken my love of fantasy and punk music without judgment--the one who had offered to read my first, stunted attempts at writing my own books.  Now she was all but gone.  The walking dead, living in my house.  I was grieving, I think--grieving for a sister whom I thought I would never get back.  I started to run--for exercise, presumably, but sometimes I think it was just because I liked the thrill of danger when a speeding truck passed too close and I could feel the speed of it.  I think there was some sick part of me that visualized myself, each and every time I began to round a curve in the road and I heard a car coming the other direction, jumping out into the lane without warning.  I imagined the impact.  I never would have done it--but the imaginary pain of that was so much easier to cope with than the invisible agony carving me out from the inside. 

Enter the boyfriend. 

That is, my sister's boyfriend.

I knew him well.  He was a brilliant musician, a tenor in the chorus and a percussionist in the band.  He wrote poetry, too, and apparently it was really good.  He skated and wore his hair long, usually stumbling into school with his headphones on and this look on his face like he'd been pulled rudely out of hibernation.  We were sort-of friends who knew each other through band.  But honestly, I'd been idolizing him since I was twelve.  If you'd asked me when I started middle school what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said that I wanted to be him.

He fell in love with her.  And for that I admire him more than I can possibly describe.  He looked at this broken, twisted, pale creature barely stumbling through full school days and he loved her.  Later, he would tell me he felt some sort of connection with her.  It was a connection I'd failed to register.  The point was, this young man, who was talented but awkward, had seen something in her that I, her sister, never had.  He'd looked past the ugly scars that marred her skin and her heart and now, two years later, you can still see it when he looks at her.  He really looks.  He sees beauty.  And for that, he's my hero.

Because after their first date, she was smiling.  For the first time in months.

And when she was out with him, I wasn't scared that she was looking for high places to jump from.

And the first time I saw him kiss her, she came to life again.

And, slowly, as she healed, so did we.  I stopped running.  The first day that I looked at a speeding car and saw a terrifying machine rather than a potential escape from everything--the first day when I saw a car coming and immediately walked off the road to avoid all possibilities of a collision--was the best day of my life.  That fear was beautiful.  It meant I no longer wanted the pain.  It meant that things were getting better. 

I can't possibly say that I understand.  That I know how it feels to lose a family member, a friend, a loved one so completely that there is no recovery, nothing at all that could bring them back.  My own depression never got that far, and my sister's thoughts of death gradually faded like old scars.  But I can say that I remember.  I remember the fear of losing someone, the despair when I though I already had.  I will always retain some of that fear.  And yes, I was terrified.  Because there is absolutely no one in the entire wide, brilliant, madhouse world that could ever possibly replace my big sister.  A single person was the beginning of her recovery. And she is living, breathing proof that it DOES get better.  That there are people out there who are just waiting for the opportunity to grab your hands and cover your eyes, and when they take their fingers away you'll be able to see the sun again.  

It was the following summer that I discovered To Write Love on Her Arms, a brilliant organization dedicated to helping people like my sister.  The ones in pain, the ones who can't see any light in the world that would be enough to draw them back out of their nightmares. 

But if there's one thing you take away from this, whoever you are, I want you to remember her.  Remember us: my big sister, and her clumsy-romantic boyfriend, and me.  Our family.  Our friends.  

To those of you who are not in her position, I can tell you without a doubt that someone you know probably is.  Be what this boy was to my sister.  Be the hand that reaches out.  They cannot be replaced. 

To those of you who are.  This is important.  This is really, really important.

There are people out there who are reaching out to you.  There is hope.  I don't care how many scars mark your body.  I don't care how many highs and lows you have experienced.  You are not alone.  And there ARE better days ahead.  I'm begging you, PLEASE- be brave.  Be brave enough to reach for the hands that are reaching back to you.  Be brave enough to look up and see those footholds.  Hope is real.  Help is real.  And your story is important.  In the words of the movie V for Vendetta: even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you.