There Are No Words for Loss

They say life can change in the blink of an eye. One moment you're making coffee and the next you're on the floor with your expensive mascara staining your cheeks and the soft white rug that you've always loved. My moment came by a phone call.

The moment was vivid and crisp, yet cool and blurry all at the same time. "Hello?" I said cheerfully answering the phone. The next three words stabbed into me like nothing I've ever felt before. "Your sister died." I could hear the pain in my mother's voice as she forced the words out. My knees buckled as I fell to the floor.

The 17 minutes it took to get to the hospital hit me at times like a movie reel that's missing scenes. I remember my boyfriend at the time picking me up. I remember his hands grabbing the phone and texting to see what we should do.

I remember him saying that she was alive again, but they didn't know for how long. I remember the cold. December is always so cold in Ohio. I remember walking into the hospital smelling the hand sanitizer and feeling as if I'd left my body somewhere else.

Then it happened. I saw her. My beautiful twin sister lying in a hospital bed surrounded by family and nurses. She was hooked up to machines. So many machines. "Whatever she did to herself was horrible. She's lucky to be alive," said the nurse with a cruel voice as I walked in.

Why would she say such a thing? My wonderful, kind, confident sister would never hurt herself on purpose. My sister was funny, courageous, the type of person who joined the golf team just to be in the yearbook picture. She wouldn't do this.

The truth is, she didn't. Some may argue that she did. The reality of it all is that my sister had a dark side. A side that she found for years to get out of, but failed. A side that I've seen take down other friend's, family, and celebrities in seconds. My charming twin sister was addicted to drugs.

She had been to rehab. In fact, the doctors say this was a relapse. She had been clean for so long that when she relapsed she took too large of a dose that her body couldn't handle. Her perfect tiny body that I always envied wasn't strong enough.

She came home late the night before. She had gotten in a car accident. The officer told her to go home and sleep it off. My mother said the same when she got home. She hit her head while she was driving high and didn't want my mom to know. She didn't want to admit that the addiction had conquered her again.

When my mother found her it was too late. Her face was blue, her body cold, my beautiful twin sister wasn't with us. She called the ambulance. She called me, "Your sister died."

We were lucky. We were lucky that she survived. We were lucky enough to have nurses and doctors and family and faith by our sides while she fought for her life. We were lucky she woke up. But we weren't lucky enough. The addiction took my sister away from me. The addiction gave me a person trapped in a body that they can't use. The addiction turned my beautiful twin sister into a quadriplegic young woman who cannot speak or eat on her own. The addiction took my sister.

They say time heals wounds. Some wounds are just too deep to heal.