I don’t think I am meant to die. Now, wanting to die and meaning to die is different. Have you ever felt like if some things didn’t exist in your life, you would have already be gone? I’m sure this applies to many people, because it certainly has been playing jokes on me. As I speak right now, I want to die. Some who love me can’t understand this, because they haven’t experienced it. I am blunt to a fault. I want to die. Why? Because pressure controls me, and I have no control over myself. Can I ever? No, because if I did have control, I would control my sanity, I would control my happiness, and more than anything in the world, I would be able to control this. When my life comes close to the edge, I can feel my heart pulsing with a pain, repeating with another beat. I can feel air pushing out in my nose, working hard to pull some life back in. And then there is reason.  I don’t know where this comes from, but it can defeat pain. It keeps me breathing. There are responsibilities that I am ashamed to run away from. And then it hurts more, because in no way except this, I am dying every day while I am alive. I am breathing when I shouldn’t. The feeling of living becomes wrong but the purpose of living is right.

My brother has autism. He cannot speak at all but he can hear and understand English. He is in my opinion, one of the most beautiful boys I have ever seen in my life-and I do not say this because I am his sister. Just talking about him these days gets me extremely worked up and emotional. He is truly what I live for, and I say this definitely. I live for him more than my mother, than my father, than my boyfriend. These people in my life can live without me, but my brother cannot. My brother has low-functioning autism, which means he progresses very slowly mentally as he grows up. Physically he is fine, and looks like any normal 13 year old, but in his mind he is between two and three years of age. He is a child at heart and cannot sleep until you read him a child story book at night and tuck him in bed. He cries and hiccups when he is ignored and often retreats to himself to isolation as a common act of people with autism. He often looks at the sky and focuses on absolutely nothing, always in a deep thought. His language is characterized by mumbled sounds of an infant. His smile gives me more happiness than anything in the world. At the same time, it reminds me that I need to live. It makes me cry, because I know I will have to live this pain for as long as I live, because I need to protect him. It reminds me that I need to never show this, because I can’t let him know I am ever weak. It really reminds me that I can’t let my depression show on my face, because I need to make him smile before he realises he is different than everyone else.

Life gives everyone a reason to live. I guess the very strong people who seek hard and low to find truth get extremely hurt in the process. It gives us a reason to take away the life we have. It gives us a reason to take away something so many people would die to have: life. Cancer patients, HIV targets, confined prisoners in the corners of the earth. It makes us forget that no matter how much we say it; at least one person will miss us in the world. In my case, the one person can’t live without me. The one person can’t breathe without me. And I suppose if I need to give up my life, I would have to keep telling myself to just wait one more day. I would need to tell myself that sometimes life isn’t worth it, but that doesn’t mean you take away life from someone else…even if it burns your heart black.