That Day.

“I can’t do this anymore”. You could hear the desperation in her voice. I didn’t know what to say. I was attempting to the best of my ability to try and understand what she was going through. How does one put themselves in someones place when they’ve never ever experienced such pain, such confusion, such agony and then to top it all off there are days when she can’t even feel the pain, or any emotion. I stood there frozen in time, what if she actually did it? What if she was no longer here? How would I endure the pain? My siblings? My dad? And if she didn’t what would we do to help her? I wanted to tell her that it would be okay. But would it? Would anything ever be the same again?

“Please don’t do this” he was trying so hard to take away the knife. He just didn’t know how to. He didn’t know how to do it without her hurting herself and himself. I could feel the tears running down my face, I finally screamed “NO, mom, don’t do this, think about all of us”. We were all in a panic, you could sense the wave of despair hitting all of us. How would we ever come back from this? How would she?

“I just don’t want to live like this anymore” She cried out. We knew she was in pain, we had tried really hard to understand, we had tried so hard to make it better. Of course, it obviously hadn’t done much, but we tried. We really did. I was praying inside, I was hoping he would hear me. I was hoping and praying for a miracle. It felt like forever that we were screaming, shouting, pleading, crying for her to not do this. “Please don’t do this, I love you” He kept saying. “We will help you, Please, let us help you” he just kept repeating. I had never seen him with such anguish. This moment had aged him many years, you could see the sadness in his eyes, the tears streaming down his face. I could feel his heart breaking with every word that he spoke. You could just see that he felt helpless, that if she did it, he would be lost forever.

I think we all aged that day. I felt older, perhaps not wiser but definitely older. We were never the same after that day. For me, I knew that I would always have it in the back of my mind. Especially days after the incident, what if I came home from school and found her lifeless? What if it were my siblings? Or my dad? Would I have received a call from the office, the principal sit me down and break the news? I always had this fear and although the results were far from what had gone through my head that day, I still live with it. I don’t think I’ll ever understand her pain, I don’t think we will ever get back what we lost that day but I also know what we gained. I remember going to bed that night and crying myself to sleep, I thought how I almost lost my mom that day.