Simone
I always hated being an only child. When I was little, I begged my mom for a sister the way other kids begged for a puppy, with both hands under my chin, theatrics and everything.
She’d laugh and point at me with the wooden spoon.
“Baby, I can barely handle you,” she’d say.
“Two of you? Absolutely not. The house would go up in flames.”
That’s the answer she gave me my entire childhood, every time I would ask.
It wasn’t until later in high school that she told me the truth—how my birth almost took her with it, how she almost died bringing me into this world, how the doctors did what they had to do to save her, which meant performing a hysterectomy.
She told me she wanted more than anything to give me siblings growing up, but it was impossible.
Adoption was never an option with their finances, so she just played along with the excuse that I was too much to handle on my own.
She was always very playful about it, never wanted me to feel bad, never wanted me to know that she couldn’t give me the one thing I wanted most as a kid.
I guess I became exactly that—big voice, big laugh, bigger style.
My parents were my first best friends and, for a long time, my only friends.
I’ve always been closer to my mom. I’m most like her, plus my dad is super quiet but still tries to show me love how he knows how to.
They spoiled me with time more than material things.
Movie nights on Tuesdays just because. Grocery store dance parties in aisle nine.
“Be loud,” my mom would say when I sang in the kitchen.
“Be happy,” she’d tell me, kissing the top of my head. “Be free.”
It turns out “loud and happy and free” looks great in pictures and at lunch tables, but it doesn’t always turn into sleepovers or shared secrets. People liked to orbit me. Not many wanted to land. There’s a version of me that learned how to be the party and go home alone.
Then I met Lydia.
She was quiet, basically the complete opposite of me, but like on some soul-deep level, little Simone knew—even if she didn’t know at the time—that Lydia was my soulmate.
My platonic soulmate in this world. We did everything together.
As different as we were from each other, we moved exactly the same.
We were always in sync. She became the sister I never had.
Maybe the only sister I was supposed to have.
Life happened like a storm to her. One that never went away, one that hovered, always waiting to strike again with its lightning.
Between her parents’ death, her sister’s death, the bullying at school, being in and out of foster homes, the abuse with Eli, the betrayal with Katie, the onslaught of emotions that took her under once we got to college, it all kept chipping away at her little by little.
Most of those things on their own would take someone out, yet life wanted to keep handing her more and more and more.
I wanted to be her seat belt and her oxygen and her escape route…but no matter how much I tried, no matter how many times I picked her up and begged her to keep going, I couldn’t save her…I couldn’t take her away from the thing that was killing her the most…her own mind.
College was supposed to be our reset. A new life, new city, same us.
I thought we’d be closer than ever, and I’d get her out of her shell and out of the dark for good.
Instead, I watched her learn how to disappear in plain sight—parties, bottles, flings that left her hollow.
At first, I told myself it was normal—everybody does dumb for a season.
But when I found out about the drugs…it broke my heart completely.
A part of her always lived in me, and when she broke, I broke.
I didn’t want her to end up like her sister—in the ground because of pills, because she was trying to find an escape that she couldn’t come back from.
Staring at her now, in this hospital bed, while she looks so peaceful, so far away from the pain. I can’t help but want to drag her out of that bliss she’s temporarily in. Beg for her to come back to me. A part of my heart is lying in that bed with her.
God, please bring her back to me. I promise I’ll take care of her, I’ll get her the help, I’ll make sure she gets better.
Just please don’t take her. She still has too much to do, too much to come back from.
This can’t be it for her. Her story doesn’t get to end like this.
You can’t let her go through everything she’s gone through and not let her experience the redemption she deserves.
I’m begging you. I just want to see her happy.
I want to experience the version of Lydia in this lifetime that isn’t in constant pain, the healed version, the version that gets to experience beautiful love that makes her feel safe.
I want to watch her find her purpose in life.
She’s too perfect of a soul to be wasted and put into the ground.
I reach down, squeezing her hand, pretending I can feel her squeeze it back. Lani wraps her arms around me and presses her head on my shoulder.
“She’s coming back,” she whispers.
I let the tears fall, hoping she’s right.