At my 13th birthday dinner, my mom’s friend gripped my hand and whispered

Confrontation and Initial Treatment

All those episodes, she documented and hid.

“She knew.”.

“She knew.”.

“And Kitty died anyway.”.

I started crying so hard I couldn’t see. My brother grabbed me and pulled me against him and I sobbed into his shirt.

“I’ve been so mad at her,” he said quietly.

“For a whole year, I’ve been angry and I didn’t know how to tell anyone.”.

“I knew what she did.”.

“I knew she hid all those episodes, but I couldn’t say anything because everyone was already destroyed.”.

I pulled back from him.

“Where are the journal pages?”.

“The real ones.”.

He pointed at his phone.

“I took pictures before mom could hide them completely.”.

“She kept the journal in her closet.”.

“I found it a few months after Kitty died.”.

I grabbed the phone and started sending the photos to myself. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely type.

When they finished sending, I ran downstairs. I could hear mom in the kitchen.

She was probably making dinner like nothing was wrong, like she hadn’t spent a year lying to everyone. I printed out the journal pages on the printer in dad’s office.

The machine made loud noises and spit out sheet after sheet of mom’s handwriting, all her secrets, all her documentation of how dangerous I was, all the help she didn’t get me.

I grabbed the pages and walked into the kitchen. Mom was at the counter chopping vegetables.

She looked up when I came in and her face went white when she saw what I was holding.

“Sweetheart, where did you get those?”.

I threw the pages at her. They scattered across the kitchen floor and counter.

“You knew.”.

“You knew I was getting worse and you didn’t do anything.”.

Mom’s knife clattered into the sink. She bent down and started picking up the pages with shaking hands.

“I was trying to protect you.”.

“I couldn’t let them take you away.”.

“You let Kitty die instead.”.

I was screaming.

“You were so scared of me getting real help that you just watched me get worse.”.

“You wrote it all down like some kind of science experiment, but you didn’t actually do anything.”.

Mom collapsed against the counter. Her whole body was shaking.

“I was terrified.”.

“I thought if I told the doctors, they’d put you in an institution or social services would separate you and Kitty.”.

“I thought I could handle it.”.

“I thought the locks would be enough.”.

“The locks weren’t enough.”.

“Kitty is dead.”.

The garage door slammed open and Dad ran in.

“What’s going on?”.

“I can hear you from outside.”.

He looked at me, then at Mom, then at the papers all over the floor. He picked one up and started reading.

I watched his face change as he understood what he was looking at.

“What is this?”.

His voice was quiet. Too quiet.

Mom was crying now. Mascara running down her face again, just like at my birthday.

“I should have told you.”.

“I know I should have, but I was so scared of losing both of them.”.

She looked at Dad and her face was broken.

“The episodes were getting so much worse.”.

“She was violent.”.

“She attacked me.”.

“She was trying to get to Kitty’s room.”.

“I documented everything, but I didn’t tell you because I thought I could manage it myself.”.

“I thought if I just watched carefully enough, if I just locked the doors at the right times, I could keep everyone safe without anyone having to know how bad it really was.”.

Dad’s face went completely blank. Not angry, not sad, just empty.

He dropped the paper he was holding and walked toward the door.

“Where are you going?”.

Mom followed him.

“We need to talk about this, please.”.

Dad didn’t say anything. He just walked through the garage and got in his car.

Mom ran after him, but he was already backing out of the driveway. She stood there in the driveway crying and calling his name, but he drove away.

I stood in the kitchen surrounded by the scattered journal pages.

All of mom’s secrets spread out on the floor. All the proof that she knew and didn’t help. All the evidence that Kitty’s death wasn’t just a terrible accident, but something that could have been stopped if mom had been brave enough to tell the truth.

My whole family was built on lies. Mom lying about my episodes. Mom and dad lying about Kitty being in Switzerland. Everyone lying to me about what I did.

Lies stacked on top of lies until the whole thing collapsed. An hour later, my brother found me sitting on the floor of Kitty’s room again.

I’d gone back there because it was the only place that felt real. Everything else in the house was fake. But Kitty’s room was frozen exactly how she left it, so at least it was honest.

“There’s more you need to know about that night.”.

My brother sat down on the floor next to me.

“I was home when it happened.”.

My stomach dropped.

“You were there?”.

He nodded.

“I heard Kitty scream.”.

“I ran to the window and I saw you standing at your bedroom window looking confused.”.

“And Kitty was on the lawn below.”.

His voice cracked.

“You were just standing there at the open window in your pajamas looking around like you didn’t know where you were.”.

“I couldn’t move.”.

“Couldn’t breathe.”.

“I looked right at you through the window and you looked back at me and you said, ‘Where’s Kitty?’ Just like that, completely calm.”.

“Like you were asking where she went, but she was right there.”.

“She was on the ground right below you and you couldn’t see her or didn’t understand what you were seeing.”.

He wiped his eyes.

“I ran downstairs and outside and mom was already there screaming.”.

“Dad came running out.”.

“The neighbors called an ambulance.”.

“And you came downstairs still looking confused and you tried to run to Kitty, but the paramedics had to hold you back.”.

“You were fighting them and screaming, ‘Let me help her. She needs me.'”.

“But you didn’t understand that you were the reason she needed help.”.

I had no memory of any of this. The whole night was just blank. A black hole where memories should be.

“How can I not remember?”.

My voice was tiny.

“How can something that big just be gone?”.

My brother put his arm around me.

“Your brain couldn’t handle it, so it made up a different story.”.

“One where Kitty went to Switzerland and you drove her to the airport and everything was fine.”.

The blank space in my mind felt like proof that I was broken. Not just my sleep, my whole brain.

Something so wrong inside me that it could erase my sister’s death and replace it with fake memories of airport goodbyes.

Downstairs, I could hear mom on the phone. Her voice was high and desperate.

“Please come back.”.

“Please, we need to figure this out together.”.

“I know I destroyed everything.”.

“I know I should have told you.”.

“I know I made the wrong choice, but please don’t leave us.”.

“Don’t leave her.”.

“She needs you.”.

“I need you.”.

“Please.”.

Her voice broke into sobs. She left the message and then I heard her dial again and again, calling Dad over and over even though he wasn’t answering.

I sat on Kitty’s floor listening to mom beg dad to come home and knowing he probably wouldn’t. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.

Our family was splitting apart because of secrets and lies and the things I did while I was asleep.

And somewhere in my broken brain was a memory I couldn’t access of the moment I killed my twin sister.

My brother helped me stand up and we left Kitty’s room together. He locked the door behind us and put the key back where mom hides it.

I went to my bedroom and he followed me in sitting on the floor while I climbed into bed.

He asked if I wanted him to stay and I nodded because I was scared to be alone. He pulled out his phone and started scrolling, but I could tell he wasn’t really reading anything.

I lay there staring at my ceiling with the nailed shut window in my peripheral vision. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Kitty falling.

Except I didn’t actually see it because I have no memory of it. My brain was just making up images to fill the blank space.

Around midnight, my brother fell asleep on my floor, but I stayed awake.

I grabbed my phone and started searching. I typed in parasomnia and sleepwalking and violence.

The results were worse than I expected. I found a case about a man who drove 15 m while asleep and killed someone.

He was found not guilty. I found another about a woman who attacked her husband with a knife during a sleep episode. Not guilty.

I found a father who hurt his child. Not guilty.

The legal system said these people weren’t responsible because they were unconscious. But then I started reading the comments under the articles.

The victim’s families wrote about how legal verdicts didn’t bring their loved ones back. Someone wrote that it didn’t matter if the person was asleep because their family member was still dead.

Another person said the not-guilty verdict felt like saying their loss didn’t matter. I read comment after comment from people whose lives were destroyed by someone else’s parasomnia.

They were angry and hurt and they didn’t care about brain malfunctions or medical conditions. They just knew someone they loved was gone.

I put my phone down and stared at the ceiling again. The sky outside my window started getting lighter. I never slept at all.

The next morning, I heard the doorbell ring. Mom answered it and I heard Miss Killerself’s voice from downstairs.

She sounded angry. She said she needed to talk to mom right now.

I got up and walked to the top of the stairs where I could hear better. My brother was still asleep on my floor.

Miss Killerself said she couldn’t keep pretending everything was fine when she knew what really happened. She said lying to me for a whole year was cruel.

Mom tried to get her to come inside and talk quietly, but Miss Killer’s voice got louder.

She said, “I deserve to know the truth so I could properly deal with losing my sister.”.

She said, “Everyone walking on eggshells and maintaining this fake story about Switzerland was making everything worse.”.

Mom started crying and said, “Miss Killerself didn’t understand how bad it was when they first tried to tell me”. She said, “I had a complete breakdown”. She said, “I tried to hurt myself really bad”.

She said the therapist, Evangelene Booth, told them my mind couldn’t handle knowing what I did.

Miss Killer said living a lie was worse than facing painful reality. She said I would never heal if I was living in a fake world where my sister was just away at the school.

Mom said she was trying to protect me.

Miss Killer said she was protecting herself from having to deal with my grief.

I sat down on the top step and put my head against the railing. Miss Kill herself was right.

Living the lie was worse, but the truth was also destroying me from the inside out. I didn’t know which was worse anymore.

Dad didn’t come home that night or the next day. Mom called him over and over, but he didn’t answer. I heard her leave voicemails begging him to come back.

My brother stayed home from college to be with me.

We didn’t talk much. We just existed in the same space.

2 days after he left, Dad finally came home. He looked like he hadn’t slept. His clothes were wrinkled and he had stubble on his face.

He asked where I was and mom pointed upstairs. He came to my room and sat on my bed next to me.

He said he was sorry for leaving when I needed him. He said he had to process his own anger at mom.

He said he was also angry at himself for not noticing the warning signs. He said he should have pushed harder for doctors and specialists before something terrible happened.

He said he needed to work through all that before he could be present for me.

I asked him if he hated mom now. He said no, but he was really mad at her choices. He said they had a lot to work through together.

He asked if I hated mom and I said I didn’t know what I felt anymore. Everything was too big and confusing.

Dad said we were going to get help. Real help this time. Not just mom trying to handle everything herself.

That afternoon, Dad called a family meeting in the living room.

Me, mom, my brother, and dad all sat together.

Dad said we needed professional help immediately.

He said, “Not just for me, but for all of us to process what happened and what had been happening”.

He said we couldn’t do this alone anymore.

Mom agreed, but she looked scared. I could tell she was afraid of what therapists might say about her choices.

I understood that fear because I was afraid of what they’d say about me, too.

Dad already had his phone out looking up therapists. He said he was calling someone today. No more waiting. No more trying to handle this ourselves.

Mom nodded and wiped her eyes. My brother sat quietly, but I could see relief on his face.

Dad found a therapist named Clara Donaldson who worked with trauma and grief. He called and explained our situation.

I don’t know what he said exactly, but he talked for a long time.

When he hung up, he said Clara could see us in 2 days for an emergency appointment.

Mom spent the next two days trying to prepare me. She said we would have to talk about everything honestly now. She said I would have to say out loud what happened.

I felt sick thinking about sitting in a room and saying I killed my sister, even though I knew it was true now. Saying it out loud felt impossible.

The day of the appointment came too fast. We all got in the car together. Nobody talked during the drive.

Clara’s office was in a regular building with other offices. We sat in the waiting room until she came out to get us.

She was younger than I expected. She had us all come into her office and sit down. There was a couch and some chairs.

She explained that today we would each describe our version of events without interruption.

She said this was important for understanding where everyone was coming from. She started with dad.

He talked about the night it happened and finding out later that mom had been hiding things. Then mom went.

She cried through most of it talking about being scared and not knowing what to do. Then my brother described hearing the scream and seeing me at the window.

Then it was my turn. I had to admit I had no real memories of that night, just the false ones I created about the airport, just the facts people told me after.

I said I didn’t remember pushing Kitty or seeing her fall or anything.

Clara said dissociative amnesia was common in cases of extreme trauma. She said my brain protected itself by erasing something it couldn’t process.

Clara turned to mom and asked her to explain her choices over the past year. Mom described her fear and desperation.

She talked about watching me try to hurt myself after they first told me. She said she genuinely believed she was protecting me by creating the Switzerland story.

Listening to her made me feel angry and sad at the same time.

She really thought she was helping me, but her help came at the cost of truth and getting me proper treatment.

My brother spoke up without being asked. He said he’d been having nightmares about that night.

He said he felt guilty for not doing more to help Kitty or stop what was happening. He said he’d been carrying this for a year and it was eating him up inside.

Clara looked at all of us and said we were all carrying different pieces of trauma and guilt. She said we needed to stop protecting each other from reality.

She said the protection was actually making things worse.

Near the end of the session, Clara said she wanted to refer me to her colleague Rosie Donaldson. She said Rosie worked with sleep disorders like mine.

She said I needed a proper sleep study and treatment plan before anything else.

The idea of being monitored while I slept made my stomach hurt, but I knew it was necessary. I couldn’t let this happen again. I couldn’t hurt anyone else while I was asleep.

Clara scheduled our next family session and gave Dad Rosy’s contact information.

We left her office and got back in the car. Nobody talked on the drive home either, but something felt different, like we’d finally started dealing with reality instead of hiding from it.

Dad called Rosy’s office the next morning and got me an appointment for that afternoon. The waiting room had calming paintings on the walls and soft music playing, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

Rosie came out to get me herself. She was younger than Clara, maybe in her 30s, with red hair pulled back in a ponytail.

She shook my hand and led me back to her office alone. Mom wanted to come, but Rosie said she needed to talk to me first.

Rosie had me sit in a chair across from her desk and she pulled out a folder with my name on it.

She explained that Clara had sent over notes about my situation and that she specialized in sleep disorders like mine. She used the word parasomnia and wrote it down so I could see how it was spelled.

She said my type was rare but not unheard of and that there were treatments available.

She pulled out diagrams of the brain and showed me the parts that control sleep and wake cycles. She pointed to areas and explained how sometimes the signals get mixed up, how my body could be moving and active while my brain was still in deep sleep.

She said what happened to Kitty wasn’t a choice I made but a malfunction like a computer glitching.

But then she stopped and looked right at me. She said she needed me to understand something important.

She said that even though it was a medical condition, even though I was unconscious, Kitty was still gone.

She said I could hold both truths at the same time. I wasn’t a bad person and I didn’t choose to hurt anyone, but my sister was still dead because of my actions.

Hearing her say it so directly made my chest tight. She didn’t try to make me feel better or tell me it wasn’t my fault in that soft way everyone else did.

She just stated the facts. I appreciated that even though it hurt.

Rosie said we needed to do a sleep study to understand exactly what was happening in my brain during episodes. She explained I would spend a night at the hospital where they would hook me up to monitors and record everything.

She said her colleague worked there and would handle the study personally. She pulled out a calendar and we scheduled it for the following week.

She gave me a packet of information to read and told me to write down any questions I had.

The appointment lasted an hour and when I came out, mom was still in the waiting room biting her nails.

The week before the sleep study dragged by. I read the packet Rosie gave me about 15 times.

It explained all the wires they would attach to my head and chest and legs.

It said the room would have cameras recording me all night. It said most people felt weird sleeping in a hospital, but that the data was important.

Mom packed me a bag like I was going to camp. Dad drove me to the hospital on the night of the study.

We checked in at the front desk and a nurse led us to a room that looked almost normal except for all the equipment.

There was a regular bed and a TV and a chair, but one wall was entirely made of glass with a room behind it full of computers and monitors.

The nurse introduced me to Nolan. He was tall with gray hair and glasses.

He shook my hand and explained what would happen. He said he would attach electrodes to my scalp to measure my brain waves and bands around my chest to track my breathing and sensors on my legs to record any movement.

He said it would feel weird but wouldn’t hurt.

It took almost an hour to get everything attached. The wires from my head connected to a box on the nightstand.

Nolan said I could move around but to be careful not to pull anything loose.

He said to try to sleep normally, which seemed impossible.

Mom and dad had to leave at 9:00. Mom hugged me three times before finally going.

Nolan said he would be in the observation room all night watching the monitors. He said if I needed anything to just call out.

I changed into my pajamas and got into bed. The electrodes on my head itched.

I could see Nolan through the glass wall sitting at a desk with multiple screens. I tried to read but couldn’t focus. I turned off the light around 10:30 and lay there staring at the ceiling.

The room was too quiet. I must have fallen asleep eventually because the next thing I remember is Nolan gently shaking my shoulder.

Sunlight was coming through the window. He said good morning and started removing the electrodes.

I asked him if anything happened and he said we would review everything together after breakfast.

A nurse brought me eggs and toast. My hair was sticky from the gel they used to attach the electrodes.

After I ate, Nolan had me come into the observation room. He pulled up video footage on one of the screens.

He said I had an episode around 2:00 in the morning. He pressed play.

I watched myself sit up in bed. My eyes were open, but they looked wrong, empty.

I got out of bed and walked to the door. I tried the handle, but it was locked for safety.

I stood there pulling on it for almost a minute. Then I walked back to bed and lay down.

The whole thing I looked awake, but Nolan said the brainwave data showed I was in deep sleep the entire time. Watching it made me feel sick. That thing that looked like me but wasn’t really me.

Nolan let the video play longer. I thrashed in the bed for a while, my arms flailing.

At one point, I sat up and seemed to be looking right at the camera, but my face was blank.

Nolan stopped the video. He pulled up charts and graphs showing my brain activity.

He pointed to spikes and valleys and explained what they meant. He said I had severe parasomnia with violent tendencies during episodes.

He said the good news was that medication could help reduce the frequency and intensity. He wrote out a prescription and explained I would need to take it every night before bed.

He said it might take a few weeks to find the right dosage. Then he said something that made my stomach drop.

He said I would need to sleep in a controlled environment with safety measures for the foreseeable future. He said possibly years.

He said we couldn’t risk another incident. I asked him if I would ever be normal again and he paused before answering.

He said I could live a full life with proper management, but that this was a chronic condition I would have for a long time.

Mom and dad picked me up from the hospital and we stopped at the pharmacy to fill the prescription.

That afternoon, Dad made phone calls to contractors. By the next day, workers were at our house measuring my bedroom.

They installed padding on the walls near my window. Thick foam covered in vinyl that looked like something from a mental hospital.

They put alarms on my door that would sound if I opened it while the system was armed. They mounted cameras in two corners of my room with night vision capability.

Mom tried to make it seem less scary by letting me pick the color of the padding. I chose gray because it seemed less obvious than white.

The installation took 3 days. I slept on the couch while they worked.

When they were done, my room looked like a padded cell. The window was already nailed shut from before, but now it had bars installed, too.

Dad set up the camera system on his phone so he and mom could watch me from their bedroom. He showed me how it worked.

I could see myself on his screen from two different angles. Mom bought new bedding to try to make the room feel normal.

But nothing could hide what it really was. A cage to keep me from hurting anyone else.

I stood in the doorway looking at my transformed room and felt the weight of what my life had become. This was my reality now. Medication and monitoring and padded walls.

Dad put his hand on my shoulder but didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

I had already missed a week of school during all the appointments and the sleep study. Mom wanted me to wait longer but I insisted on going back.

Walking into school that Monday felt like everyone was staring at me. My best friend met me at my locker.

She asked if I was okay and I didn’t know how to answer.

I said I was dealing with some medical stuff. She nodded but looked uncomfortable.

At lunch, I sat at our usual table and the conversation felt forced. People kept glancing at me and then looking away quickly.

I heard whispers in the hallway between classes. Someone said my name and then stopped talking when I walked by.

I knew rumors had spread about why I was absent. Small town. Everyone knows everything. By the end of the day, I felt exhausted from pretending everything was fine.

The next morning, the school counselor called me to her office over the intercom during second period. She had me sit down and offered me water.

She said the administration knew about my situation and had protocols in place to support me. She emphasized that I wasn’t in trouble and that they wanted to help.

But the way she said it, the careful word choices made me feel like everyone saw me as dangerous.

She said I could come to her office anytime I needed a break. She said my teachers had been briefed and would make accommodations if I needed them.

She asked if I felt safe at the school and I said yes even though I didn’t know if that was true. She asked if I felt safe at home and I said yes to that too. She made me promise to tell her if anything changed.

When I left her office, I felt marked different like everyone knew something was wrong with me.

That week we had another family therapy session with Clara. She said it was time to start addressing Kitty directly instead of talking around her.

She said we needed to talk about our memories of her and our grief over losing her.

This was the first time we were allowed to openly mourn her instead of pretending she was in Switzerland.

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Clara had us go around and each share a favorite memory. Dad went first.

He talked about teaching Kitty to ride a bike and how she fell seven times but kept getting back on.

Mom couldn’t even start. She just broke down completely, sobbing so hard she couldn’t breathe.

My brother talked about how Kitty used to leave him notes in his backpack before school.

Clara let us sit in the grief for a while without trying to fix it or move on.

Then it was my turn. I shared a memory of Kitty and me planning our future together.

We were going to be roommates in college and get an apartment with a balcony. We were going to adopt a dog together and name it something ridiculous like Sir Fluffington.

We had it all planned out. Saying it out loud made me realize I stole her future even though I didn’t mean to.

She would never go to college or get an apartment or adopt a dog.

Clara stopped me there. She said I needed to understand something.

She said I could hold two truths at the same time. I wasn’t morally responsible because I was unconscious when it happened.

But Kitty was still dead because of my actions. Both things were true and I had to learn to live with both.

She said trying to deny either truth would keep me stuck.

My brother spoke up without Clara asking him to. He said he had been angry at me even though he knew it wasn’t fair.

He said he knew I was asleep and didn’t mean to do it, but part of him was still mad that I got to keep living and Kitty didn’t.

Hearing him say it out loud actually helped because it was honest. Clara asked him to say more.

He talked about feeling guilty for being angry and feeling angry about feeling guilty. He said it was all mixed up in his head.

Clara let him talk without interrupting. She said his feelings were valid even if they weren’t logical.

She said he could be angry at the situation without being angry at me as a person.

We both ended up crying. Clara handed us tissues and let us sit there crying together. Then dad started talking.

He said he had been having intrusive thoughts about what he could have done differently. He said he kept replaying the months before it happened, looking for signs he missed.

He wondered if he should have noticed mom’s secret journal entries or insisted on more aggressive treatment earlier.

He said he lay awake at night thinking about all the whatifs.

Clara stopped him. She said guilt was only useful if it led to different future choices, not if it just created suffering.

She said we couldn’t change the past no matter how much we analyzed it.

She said the only thing we could control was what we did moving forward. She made dad say out loud that he couldn’t have known what would happen.

He struggled with it. Clara made him repeat it three times before we moved on.

The next week, Clara brought someone new to our session. Paula Donaldson walked in carrying a leather bag and introduced herself as a grief counselor.

She was Nolan’s sister and she specialized in helping families process death.

Clara explained that we’d been working on acknowledging what happened, but now we needed specific tools for healthy grieving.

Paula sat across from us and opened her bag. She pulled out pamphlets about grief stages and journals designed for loss.

She explained that we’d been unable to grieve properly because of the deception.

She said grief needs acknowledgement and we’d been stuck in a strange limbo where Kitty was both dead and supposedly alive in Switzerland.

Mom nodded and wiped her eyes. Paula walked us through exercises for processing loss.

She had us each write down one memory of Kitty that we wanted to preserve.

Dad wrote about teaching her to ride a bike. My brother wrote about her singing badly in the car.

I wrote about how she always shared her dessert with me, even when I’d already eaten mine.

Paula collected our papers and read them aloud. Hearing our memories spoken by someone else made them feel more real somehow.

Then Paula suggested something that made my stomach drop. She said we should hold a private memorial service for Kitty where we could say goodbye properly.

The room went silent. I felt like I couldn’t breathe because a memorial service meant admitting she was really gone forever.

Mom spoke up immediately through tears, saying she needed closure desperately. She said she’d needed it for a year but couldn’t have it while maintaining the Switzerland fiction.

Dad reached for mom’s hand. My brother stared at the floor.

Paula explained that memorial services help families process death by creating a defined moment for goodbye.

She said it didn’t have to be big or formal, just us acknowledging together that Kitty died and we miss her.

Clara asked how I felt about it. I couldn’t answer at first because my throat was too tight.

Finally, I said it scared me because it made everything final. Paula nodded like she understood. She said that was normal and the fear didn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.

Over the next few days, we planned the memorial service. Mom wanted it at our house in the backyard where Kitty used to play.

Dad agreed and started cleaning up the garden area. My brother helped him set up chairs.

Mom insisted that Miss Killerself should be invited because she tried to make us face the truth at my birthday dinner.

I didn’t want her there at first, but mom said she deserved to be part of this. She said Miss Kill herself had been Kitty’s friend, too, and had been grieving alone while we all pretended.

The hardest part was writing something to say about Kitty. Paula gave me a worksheet with prompts, but every question felt impossible to answer.

“What did I love most about her?”.

“Everything.”.

“What’s my favorite memory?”.

“I couldn’t pick just one.”.

“What do I want people to know about her?”.

“That she deserved to live.”.

“And I took that away.”.

I sat at my desk for hours staring at blank paper. My brother knocked on my door and asked if I needed help.

We sat together and he helped me write something short. Just a few sentences about loving my sister and being sorry I couldn’t remember our last moments together.

The morning of the memorial service, I woke up feeling sick. Mom had to help me get dressed because my hands were shaking too much to button my shirt.

Dad was in the kitchen making coffee but not drinking it. My brother wore a suit that was too small for him now.

We walked outside to the backyard where dad had arranged chairs in a semicircle. Miss Kill herself arrived carrying flowers. She hugged mom for a long time.

Clara and Paula came together. Rosie showed up too, even though we hadn’t specifically invited her.

Everyone sat down and the backyard felt too quiet.

Dad spoke first about Kitty being smart and funny and kind. His voice kept breaking and mom had to take his hand.

My brother talked about how Kitty left him notes in his backpack before school.

Mom couldn’t speak at all. She just cried into Dad’s shoulder.

Then it was my turn. I stood up holding my paper and my hands shook so hard the paper rattled.

I read my statement about loving Kitty and being sorry. I barely made it through the last sentence before I had to sit down.

Everyone was crying now. Paula led us in a moment of silence.

We sat there in the quiet backyard and I felt Kitty’s absence like a physical weight. After the service ended, Miss Killerself pulled me aside near the fence.

She told me that Kitty talked about me constantly at the school. She said Kitty loved me more than anything and was always bragging about her twin sister.

Hearing that somehow made everything worse because it reminded me what I destroyed.

Miss Killer put her hand on my shoulder and said Kitty would want me to forgive myself.

I told her I didn’t know if I ever could. She said that was okay too and squeezed my shoulder before walking away.

The medication Rosie prescribed started working after a few weeks.

I had fewer episodes at night and could sleep through most nights without incident.

But knowing I was watched on camera every night made me feel like a prisoner in my own room. The red light from the camera blinked constantly in the corner.

I couldn’t forget it was there watching everything I did.

In my next appointment with Rosie, I told her how the camera made me feel trapped. She explained this was necessary for safety and that eventually we might be able to reduce monitoring.

She said there were no guarantees though because parasomnia was unpredictable.

I had to accept that I might need cameras watching me sleep for years or maybe forever.

A week later, I had an individual session with Clara without my family there. She asked how I was really doing and I couldn’t lie anymore.

I admitted I was having thoughts about whether everyone would be better off if I wasn’t here.

Clara’s face got serious immediately. She said we needed to implement a safety plan right away.

She was direct about the fact that losing me wouldn’t bring Kitty back. She said it would only add more trauma to an already devastated family.

She made me promise to call her if the thoughts got too strong. We wrote out a safety plan together with steps to take when I felt that way.

She taught me coping strategies for when the thoughts got overwhelming. We practiced them over and over until I could use them automatically.

She made me repeat them back to her five times.

She said these thoughts were a normal response to unbearable guilt, but acting on them would be another tragedy, not a solution.

Mom started seeing her own therapist to address her guilt and the choices she made.

She told me one night that she understood if I couldn’t forgive her right now. I was honest and said I didn’t know how I felt about her anymore.

Sometimes I was angry and sometimes I felt sorry for her and sometimes both at once.

Clara said that ambivalence was okay and didn’t need to be resolved immediately. She said I could have complicated feelings about mom for a long time and that was valid.

Dad took a leave of absence from work to be more present at home.

I noticed he started checking on me multiple times during the night even though the camera system already monitored me.

I’d wake up and see him standing in my doorway just watching me sleep. His hypervigilance was exhausting, but I understood it came from fear of losing another daughter.

Sometimes I’d pretend to be asleep when he checked so he wouldn’t feel bad about waking me.

A few weeks later, my brother came home with his college acceptance letter and sat me down in the living room.

He got into a school 3 hours away and would be leaving in the fall. I could see relief in his face even though he tried to hide it.

He told me he needed some distance from everything that happened here. It hurt, but I understood why he couldn’t stay in this house anymore.

We had a session with Clara where she helped us talk about it without anyone getting defensive.

My brother admitted he felt guilty for wanting to leave, but he needed space to heal on his own terms.

Clara said that was healthy and that we could maintain our relationship even with physical distance. We agreed to do weekly video calls so we wouldn’t lose touch completely.

I made him promise he’d actually answer when I called and he said he would.

The next week, Detective Griffin showed up at our door asking to speak with my parents.

I heard them talking in the kitchen and caught bits about treatment plans and medical documentation.

Griffin came into the living room after and sat down across from me. He was kind, but his face was serious when he spoke.

He asked how my treatment was going and if I was taking my medication consistently. I told him yes and showed him the pill organizer mom kept on the counter.

He nodded and then said something that made my stomach drop.

He explained that my condition made me legally a danger to other people even though what happened wasn’t my fault.

He said the case was closed as an accidental death because of my documented parasomnia episode, but he emphasized that any future incidents would be viewed completely differently now.

The police and courts knew about my condition and its severity.

If something happened again, I wouldn’t get the same understanding I got the first time.

His warning was harsh, but I knew he was being honest with me. He told my parents they needed to take my treatment seriously because next time there might not be a next time for our family.

After he left, I felt sick thinking about how I was basically on probation for the rest of my life.

2 weeks later, I had a bad setback that proved Griffin’s warning wasn’t just talk.

I went to bed after taking my medication like always. When I woke up the next morning, my room was destroyed.