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Being mentally ill and having significant birthdays is hard and unless you’ve felt it yourself you cannot understand how it feels. Turning an age you never imagine you’d make it to and not knowing what the future holds as you hadn’t planned to make it that far. Chris thought it be better if he could stay young forever, frozen in time while his brothers would age and he would stay stuck forever 20. He couldn’t even drive yet he had never learned. Matt offered to teach him and mentor him. Many times. He never drank, promised to stay sober until his 21st birthday came. He promised to take his first drink with his triplet brothers, never touch a cigarette, travel the world with his family and find the love of his life, but maybe it was better if he was frozen in time. Isolated by himself the night before his birthday which he couldn’t even identify as his own, as he shared it. He loved and hated this simultaneously. He’d do anything for his brothers and they mean the world to him but maybe just one thing being his own for once would be nice. If he was paused in time they could never intervene his individuality again.
He went to kitchen and took a number, but not a noticeable amount, of pills from each packet and bottle. He didn’t want his brothers to find him and ruin their special day too. They deserve to live a good life without him and in that moment he couldn’t see that he was part of their good life, that they couldn’t be any better without him, only worse. They were losing part of themselves with him, but he continued to trudge towards the bathroom and swallow each pill individually between sips of water. He waited as the dizziness began to cloud him, he imagined that this would be it. It was finally over and he could be stuck in time as a kid forever. Forever young.
His phone buzzed in his hand and the screen lit up so show him that Matt had sent him a random TikTok. Chris had always thought it was sweet when people sent him random pictures or videos. It’s like they were thinking of you and wanted to share part of their life with you. It made him feel like someone remembered him. Maybe someone would remember him once he was gone.
It was as this realisation hit him that he was flooded with guilt, he’d not only ruined his own birthday but his triplet brother’s birthday too. How could he do that to them, how could he be so selfish, all he ever wanted was them to be free of him and his burden. He wanted it all to stop. but he felt so sick. so nauseous. he was too late. The pills had settled and he was feeling tired, Matt knocked at the door. insisting he needed to shit. It was urgent. He told Chris to open the door just for him to figure out the door wasn’t locked. The door swung open. Matt found Chris perched on the floor beside the toilet sickly pale and weary. Chris mumbled that he had made a mistake, he shouldn’t of done it and that he was sorry but Matt didn’t know what he was talking about. Only realising what was going on when Chris gestured to the few pills scattered on the floor and stuttered something about the pills and that he had taken too many. Matt didn’t know if it was an accident or purposeful all he knew that Chris looked terribly ill in that moment and he needed help. He screamed for Nick and called for an ambulance, they told him to try and make Chris throw up try to get some of the pills of his system but when Matt tried to help his brother, he refused to open his mouth, tightly clenching his teeth shut and shaking his head violently with his eyes, squeezing shut silently, begging them to let him go. Let him be a peace. but Matt couldn’t believe that Chris had hidden his struggles to the point that Chris was causing his own death and he hadn’t fucking noticed. Matt prized open his mouth, tugging
at Chris’ jaw and shoved his fingers into the back of his throat not caring if he threw up in the toilet, on the floor or all over himself, just needing the reassurance that some of those pills weren’t in him. Chris gagged and his eyes streamed they tried to bite down on Matts fingers. He eventually threw up half dissolved, pills, fizzing slightly and covered in bile so it
They helped but he didn’t want help. He wanted peace, Nick guided the paramedics to Chris, showing them where they found their baby brother as Matt continued to hug Chris and repeatedly ask Nick how they could’ve missed the signs. How they could be so close with someone so usually energetic cheerful and happy and not see through it and figure out it was a facade on a performance to make sure they were content happy with themselves. they watched as he was carried out the house and the paramedics reassured them that he would survive and that his brothers did what they could by purging some of the pills out of him. His sweater was torn off as they monitored his heart rate and the marks that decorated his wrists only broke them more. Nick turned to Matt expecting them to both drive close behind the ambulance and follow Chris to the hospital where they would anxiously await news of their triplet but Matt still needed to shit.