A sister lost

An unspoken rule has been shared by all members of my household for such a long time, yet never has it been discussed between us. When the news first hit it was as lightning, I was shocked into silence and self-reflection.

Me: 'Why are the police here? Where is Alice?'
Dad: 'They found her wandering in the traffic, something happened.'
Me: 'What?! Did a car hit her, is she alright?!'
Dad: 'No, nothing like that...she got into a vehicle with three men, they took her to their house against her will.'
Me: 'What. No. What did they do to her?'
Dad: 'Everything.'

But now, less lightning-like it festers as a poison below the very foundations of this once-amiable family, slowly eating away at all of us. But each and every action has a reaction, this surreally cruel situation was to get harder to deal with. I awoke on the 1st of August, 2008 to find my sister unconscious outside my bedroom door, an empty bottle of sleeping pills lay beside her head. The weeks that followed saw us going through a phase of removing all knives, and hiding all our medication. This stopped when we realised that if she wanted to, she could end her life at any time on her way to school. So why bother?

Since that day, she has been rushed to the hospital for multiple attempts at taking her own life every couple months.

As her older brother, this destroys me. I should be helping, but aside from holding her hand while she's unconscious and calling for yet another ambulance, I don't know what to do. We're hoping that maybe if we just don't talk about what happened, the abhorrent deed along with its after-effects may slither away, far out of reach of any of our memories, leaving us in peace. But, deep down we know and accept that this will never be the case. What was done cannot be "un-done". We're stuck with the dice that were rolled for us. Forced to keep it here in our house and mind, as if the memory of it has become a permanent member of our family. Until the very last of our hearts stops beating, this repulsive monster will not leave our world.

Time has shown me that discussing such an act only makes my melancholy worse, unloading my burdens onto others simply isn't fair. There seems to be no clear way out of this. So perhaps, if we continue to avoid discussion and deny it any place on our lips for long enough, we may one day be set free from the tyranny of the situation we are trapped to live under...That's the silent-hope we share here, anyway.

Yet still, I cannot help but catch myself wondering; how long will it be until sirens can be heard outside my house again? And why will we not solve this now, before they are even given reason to start - why do we do nothing but wait?