I Listened, He Talked

To the lost and lonely,

“I had to take Joseph to the emergency room this semester,” Josh says as he walks in. He takes off his shoes, first the right then the left, a hand on our front door for stability.

Before I can ask, my brother adds, “He OD’d on opioids.”

I stop typing, pause the music and turn around.

Today, Josh doesn’t rush to his computer like he usually does. Instead, he lingers, then drags his feet, and collapses onto the couch behind my desk with a heavy sigh, his breath infused with marijuana and nicotine.

Tonight, my brother sits on the same side of the living room as me; no computer, no phone; his hands are empty, his body is slack, but his face is like one of a prisoner. He wants to talk. To me.

Josh doesn’t get like this often, but there are moments; and those are the ones that are etched into my memory. When my brother gets into these moments, I know he’s come to the end of himself. He’s tired of being the man and he just wants to be the little brother who runs to his big sister for help.

“I was late with you that day,” Josh says after a pause, his eyes hollow, his words suspended in the air.

On the day I jumped, my dad had texted the family group chat, about an hour before.

“Esther, where are you? Grandma heard a sound from the garage and she says you’re not home.”

“I’m near the supermarket,” I respond, “I’m going to pick up the groceries for lunch.”

It was true that I was near the supermarket. It was also true that I had a list of groceries in mind for lunch: basil, oregano, cherry tomatoes, and cayenne pepper. But whether or not I’d be walking into the supermarket and buying the things on that list was still up in the air. I had already found my way to the highest part of the supermarket’s parking lot at that point. I was still deliberating. But when my phone buzzed with Dad’s text, I hesitated. For a minute, I just stood there in a daze—”why am I here?” I looked down at my list of groceries, searching for an answer. “What should I do next?”

“Don’t forget the parmesan, get the good stuff!!!” Josh adds to the group chat, with exactly three exclamation points. Every summer we were back from college, Josh and I would cook up something with linguine, spaghetti, or fettucine, but it was never considered a finished dish without the mound of grated parmesan to top it off. Josh and I were planning on making pasta for lunch that day. I could’ve stayed home and gone with that plan.

“What if I responded to that group chat a minute too late?” Josh says; his body turns to face me, his eyes now searching for something—love? hope? forgiveness? “What if I could’ve saved you if I had just picked up my phone the minute it buzzed instead of waiting? What if that’s why…?”

Something between fear, guilt, and despair crosses his face. With every “what-if”, my brother disappears into the couch’s black polyester.

When I was at the hospital, my psychiatrist called for a family meeting that I opted to stay out of. The next morning, he came over to tell me that Josh was the only family member who kept interrupting the conversation to bring up his own theories about the suicide and what he believes the clinical team should be doing. I wasn’t sure what the doctor was getting at, and he must’ve seen the puzzled look on my face, because he then knelt down beside me and said, “It’s sweet Esther, what your brother was doing; he clearly loves you a lot, but I also get the sense that he feels this extra burden of responsibility for your life, especially after what happened.”

I look at the boy sitting there on the couch behind my desk. I then look at the pill bottles that line the edge of both Josh’s desk and mine.

“Did you take anything today—for you know…?” I finally ask.

That’s become my default question for these times when Josh starts slipping way from this side of reality. I try to hide it the best I can but I know Josh’s ear can detect the tiniest quake in my voice. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing as a big sister, as a friend, as a person. I opt for the easy way out and just let the medications do the talking. And I hate having to resort to that. Because when I ask the question: “Did you take anything?” it’s like I’m reminding myself and Josh once again that we’re cursed with this disease that no one else can see; it lurks in the corners of our brain, taking a step back only when medication is ingested, but even then, it’s still there, distorting our sense of identity, offering confusion over clarity, and keeping us from ever having a shot at normal. We don’t have control, is what the question declares, and I have to admit that every time I ask.

Sincerely, Esther