I woke up to my mother screaming, screaming and screaming and screaming. I rubbed my fists against my sleepy eyes as I slipped out of bed and out from under the covers keeping me warm. I turned down the hallway where my mother’s scream was coming from. I was nervous while walking toward the screaming, afraid a gunman would step in front of me from out of nowhere, but when I reached my mother there was no gunman or burglar, and she was not injured. She was on both her knees, her hands pressed tightly to her temples and hot tears were running down her face as she stared into the bathroom tub. Cautiously I poked my head around and there, lying in the bathtub, covered in her own blood, was my now dead fifteen year old sister, Faith.
3 years later….
Three years has gone by since I had last seen my sister well and alive. I was ten years old when my older sister committed suicide in our bathtub. I was the only one she ever confided in, I knew her secrets and now that I look back at how she really was, I see all the symptoms, every, single, one….

I woke up startled from a nightmare about her, my sister. I was angry, frustrated and confused; where was she? Why wasn’t she here? Why did she leave me? I jumped out of bed angry tears streaming out from the corners of my cheeks. I stormed into my parent’s room, “What did you do to her? What did you do to my sister?” I screamed at them punching my dad in the chest and shaking my mom by the arms. “Ellie, Ellie Ellie, shhh…” My mom soothed enfolding me in her arms trying to calm me.

I remember that night, it was when the nightmares started and now, they never have stopped, every night it’s the same re-occurring nightmare about Faith but what’s different is that I don’t run into my parents room to get embraced and comforted by them I just muffled my cries with a pillow. Three months after the nightmares started my dad left us, my mom had found out that after Faith had died my dad had started to have affairs with the girls he worked with, so it was just me and my mom living together. Soon after my dad left my mom turned to the only thing she had left, alcohol. When the nightmares got too horrific for me to handle and I went into her room for comfort she would throw a self help book at me. I soon learned not to count on anyone but myself, and I’ve been taking care of me and only me for a year so far.