83 - The Day I Became Redundant, and the Darkness Remembered My Name
After the first five years with my brother under my care, he was finally getting better. Not every day, but most days his eyes were no longer hollow. We could talk without the walls between us, without the silence that used to swallow every attempt at connection. A scene no one who knew how we started would have ever believed. For a moment, it felt like we were climbing out of the dark together. But life always finds a way to place another obstacle in front of you. His visa was running out. I tried everything to keep him beside me every option, every loophole, every last bit of money I had. If it were only that, maybe I would have found a way. But life wasn’t that kind. The company I had given a decade of my life to was swallowed by a corporation interstate. And just like that, I was deemed too expensive to keep. Redundant. A tool no longer needed. Ten years reduced to a line item on a spreadsheet. That blow didn’t break my brother the way I feared it would...