Needed

The wind softly tugs at strands of Lillian’s hair as she stares off the railing over the train tracks, wondering how easy it would be to climb over and jump. Take that one leap that no one could stop, to have everything taken away. Both the good and the bad; sorrow and happiness, feel something that wasn’t the hollowed-out feeling in her chest for a few minutes. Lillian wouldn’t have any more bad moments, but that meant she wouldn’t have any more good ones either. Even with the tug of war playing in her head, she still wondered the same thing as she walked onto the bridge to and from school. It would then allow her mind to wonder what the TAFE students thought of her, the strange high school student who would stare at the train tracks, deep in thought before wandering away without a single word spoken. She knew deep in her heart that she would never jump. Before yesterday, the only reason was her siblings and not putting more weight onto their small shoulders. It didn’t stop her from wondering, but she had something tugging at her not to stand there for as long as she normally did. That it wasn’t just her siblings that would keep her among the living anymore. Minka was waiting for her at home, her small eight-week-old kitten, who had already been dumped by two people. Rejected from two homes because of things outside her control. Minka was like Lillian in that light, having been rejected by the same people. Her birth was as unwanted as Lillian’s had been eighteen years before. Maybe Lillian could remember what it was like to feel again, a small light in her chest had appeared as she took her new fur child home yesterday. It wouldn’t be Minka’s job to help her, but she was a good reminder that life was more than what her family thought of her, or maybe it was a reminder that now she would forever want to be needed by something to think her life meant anything and that she would never live purely for herself. Maybe it was as selfish of her to live as it would be to die, but that was something she could wander about in the morning, on her walk back to high school. For now, she was needed at home.