I have a castle that sits on the coast. It’s nuzzled in the sand, waves lapping gently against its stone walls at the tempo of a slow waltz. It rests in a place where the sun is always shining and the air is always warm.

The first person I told about my castle was my therapist. Afterwards he decided that it would just be peachy if he told my whole family so they could talk it over with me. The last person I ever told about my castle was also my therapist.

My father says it calmly. My older sister says it with disgust. My life-long best friend hardly says anything at all. But my mother, she yells it and screams it with pathetic tears rolling down her similarly pathetic face. No matter how different their voices or words are, they all say the same thing.

“Listen, Ciel… it’s fine to daydream, but you’re taking it too far.”

“You need to stop acting like a brat! Do you have any idea what you’re putting this family through just because you’re desperate for attention?”

“I… Ciel….”

“It’s not real, Ciel! Your castle is not real! Why can’t you understand that?!”

That’s what everyone says, but when I close my eyes, it’s always there, every single time. It’s constant, which, to me, makes it more real than anything else. It’s more real, at least, than whatever my family’s superficial world can give me. It’s definitely more real than any person that can just disappear one day and never come back. People say that he’s dead and that he’s in a happier place now, but it’s more reasonable to believe that he never existed in the first place. He was nothing but something we’d all dreamed up and held on to for too many years.

But he was my brother.

Always together, they used to say. Complete opposites, they used to say. They knew us, and they spoke of us, and we spoke to them.

Until that day. After that, they said different things. Only fifteen, they said. Such an enthusiastic, kind-spirited young man, they said. A hero, they said, died saving his twin sister from the bullet of a friend. After that, there was no ‘us’ anymore. There was only him, who had died a hero, and his twin sister, whom he had died for. Me.

Even after a year, I still remember the moment vividly, when I saw the gun pointed at me, in the hands of a member of the JV football team that we all knew to be kind person. I still remember the shock I felt when I saw his familiar form jump in front of me, and I still remember how I screamed at the blood that splattered on my favorite light blue cardigan. I remember watching him fall to the ground at my feet, and I remember the horrible screams and sobs that wracked my body. Then I remember that moment, in which I realized that he’d never been real in the first place, and I suddenly had no reason to cry anymore. Even at the funeral I was forced to attend, I couldn’t understand why everyone was weeping at his name. It was the same as sobbing over the death of a character in a fairy tale. Ridiculous. But when I questioned this, I dove headfirst into the wonderful world of psychiatric treatment.

Then I closed my eyes, and for the first time, I saw it. My castle, which became my staple and my escape. A place only for me. My castle, which is also my reality.

More and more frequently, I find myself being ripped away from the real world into a terrible dream, a dream where my father shakes his head, and my sister yells, and my friend whispers, and my mother cries. It doesn’t really matter to me either way, since I’ve long since realized that these people aren’t real either, because they aren’t in my castle.

But everyday, my castle moves further and further away from land, and everyday it sinks deeper and deeper into the ocean.

And I realize I am faced with a decision.

My therapist says it’s normal for 16-year-old girls to want to escape reality sometimes. He says that depression is a normal reaction to losing my brother. He gives me pills that are probably supposed to make me a social butterfly, but don’t seem to work very well. No matter how many how many drugs I take, I can’t be forced into believing that my castle isn’t real. Only a small child would believe something in a dream over something existing in reality.

Every so often, when I close my eyes, I can see my castle’s future. It’s completely submerged in the water, its stone dark and corroded, its walls home to a thousand shades of sea life. I stare at it, and I can’t help but wonder.

Am I inside?

In my dreams, my father denies me. My sister laments me. My best friend is afraid to speak to me. My mother cries when she sees my face.  My home is my prison. My existence is just as unreal as my twin’s. Even if it were a reality, it wouldn't be a reality worth returning to.

I have a castle that sits on the coast. It’s nuzzled in the sand, waves lapping gently against its stone walls at the tempo of a slow waltz. It rests in a place where the sun is always shining and the air is always warm.

Everyday it moves further and further away from land, and everyday it sinks deeper and deeper into the ocean.

If I stay in my castle, I will drown with it.

If I leave, I will have no home.

I don’t want to die.

But I’m not sure that I can resist my castle, because I know that’s where he is.

That’s where my brother is.