the love i give to you || pjm

chapter ten

"how may i help you?"

"i'd like to see my parents."

"they are in a meeting currently miss."

grace sighed in frustration and walked away from the woman at the desk. she walked out of the large building with her bag in her hands. when weren't her parents working? it was always the same thing. meetings, business trips, important decisions and work to do. it had been the same thing as she grew up.

her parent's lives revolve around work. they invest all of their time in to it without having any time for grace or jen. they were raised by an old woman who would help around the house. at first she only came around the weekends and helped keep the house in order but then she came in the weekdays to care for the two girls. her mother paid the woman to basically parent her children. do what she was supposed to do.

when the old woman died a few years ago grace was a legal adult and she had lived in a dorm on her college campus. jen was mostly left alone. now grace wished that she would have stayed at home instead of moving into a dorm. things would probably be different now. she had never wanted to blame herself for what happened to jen. she knew it wasn't her fault. not really. but she did think that one small thing could have changed everything. maybe if she would have stayed jen would be a rebelling teen enjoying her life right about now. instead she is at the hospital in a coma. no one knowing when she will wake up or if she will ever wake up.

after the accident happened her parents and herself looked for someone to blame. they blamed one another and anyone who had any association with jen. they blamed the world and fate. anything to help them cope with the pain. grace blamed her parents and herself. they were the ones to blame. they never gave jen enough attention. she was always alone doing who knows what.

jen had wanted to move in with her once she was out of high school and grace had wanted her to do so. they were so close. jen had two years left. then she would have gone on to college. she had planned to be an interior decorator or a veterinarian, she loved animals. they had been raised along with a small family pet. a small cat named jace, it was their names combined. the small cat died when grace was only twelve.

now as she walked along the streets no one knew what she has gone through when they saw her. they had no idea about her life. she just looked like a girl, a girl who had a smile on her face. they didn't know that that smile was practiced in front of the mirror at least a hundred times before it was what it was. they didn't know that it was the only way she could look and feel okay. they didn't know that it took a great amount of pain to get grace to where she was now. they had no idea that her life was a wreck. she looked so put together. she held up her walls every day, on her back. with all of her strength she held them up.

it wasn't easy. it never was. every day she felt like giving up. it took so much encouragement to get up every single day and move on with her life knowing that her sister couldn't. she had trouble waking up in the morning fearing that the world would tear her down again. that it would be against her. it took effort to eat to be the happy person she was. she fought to never let the smile fade and never let herself slip away. she needed to be the happy girl she used to be. she needed to live for her sister. she owed it to her to be happy.

she still thought about jen, about her being in a coma and she still couldn't believe it was reality. she couldn't wrap her mind around how fucked up things got. she couldn't believe that her little sister was technically brain dead and asleep for who knows how long. it all seemed surreal, like a nightmare she had yet to wake up from. this was not how things were supposed to happen. this is not what she wanted. she didn't want to live with the empty feeling in her body. she didn't want the blood to flow in her veins or her muscles to work. it still felt impossible... to live without her sister.