i don't know how to prep anymore and i don't think that's the worst thing i'm feeling right now

TW: sensitive content

it's been three days since i've been able to study properly. i keep thinking i'll get back to it and then an hour passes and i'm just sitting there.

my cousin died last week. she was 17. she didn't do well in jee and her parents had been on her case about it for months and she's gone now and i don't really know how to exist normally after that so i'm writing this instead of studying i guess.

she was my little sister. i know everyone says that about cousins but i mean it in the most literal way i can. we were both only children so we just became each other's siblings by default, since we'd spent half our childhoods in each other's houses. we were the kind of close where you stop saying "my cousin" to people because it takes too long to explain and also because "cousin" just doesn't cover it. she was just a year younger than me and she used to steal my clothes every time she visited and never give them back and i have one of hers right now sitting on my chair and i can't move it.

she would call me when things got really bad. mostly late at night, not to talk about exams or coaching or any of that, just to talk, just to have someone listen who wasn't going to respond by telling her to study harder. i would pick up and she would just start talking and i would listen and tell her there are other paths and that she's so much more than a rank and she would feel a little better by the end of the call. i thought that meant things were manageable. i thought i was helping.

a week ago she called me four times in one evening and i didn't pick up once.

the guilt is something i wasn't prepared for. i knew grief would be bad but the guilt is its own separate thing sitting right on top of the grief and it doesn't let up. it's not just the four calls, it's everything. it's the fact that i knew things were getting worse and i didn't call her more, didn't check in enough, got so caught up in my own prep that whole weeks would go by and i'd think about calling and then not call. i keep thinking about all the times she probably needed to talk and didn't reach out because she didn't want to bother me and i was just sitting here doing mock tests. i keep thinking about whether she knew how much she meant to me or whether i just assumed she knew because i was nice on the calls that she did make. i keep thinking about whether i could have just said something different, something that actually stuck, instead of the same "it'll be okay, there are other options" thing i said every time like a script. i don't know. i don't know. i just keep looping through all of it and i can't stop and i genuinely cannot focus on a single thing anymore. i'll open a chapter and read the same line six times and retain nothing and then close it and feel guilty about that too, like i'm failing her and failing myself at the same time and i can't figure out how to do either thing right.

the thing that makes it so much worse is that this is the second time. my best friend, last year, same thing, her 12th board results came out and her parents had been piling on her for months and she was gone within a week of results. i watched that happen and i thought i understood, i thought i knew how serious it gets, i thought i was being a good enough support system for my cousin because i was actually listening when she called and i still managed to not be there the one time it actually counted. two people. same pressure. same system. and i was close to both of them and here i am still sitting with my prep material open like what am i even doing.

i don't really know what i'm doing posting this here of all places. i think it's because you guys are the only people who actually understand what this whole thing feels like from the inside, the way the pressure builds over years until the exam isn't an exam anymore it's just this enormous thing your entire sense of self gets attached to, the way parents talk about ranks like it's the only language they know, the way you can feel yourself getting smaller every time results come out and you're not where everyone decided you were supposed to be. she felt all of that and i knew she felt it and i still thought she had more time.

if anyone reading this is not okay right now please just tell someone. i know it feels like saying it out loud doesn't change anything, like your rank is still your rank and your parents are still your parents and nothing about the actual situation shifts just because you talked about it. say it anyway. say it to literally anyone. if you have no one you can say it to you can say it to me and i will respond, i'm not going anywhere, i've got nowhere to be.

and if any parents somehow end up reading this, please just tell your kid clearly that you love them more than the result. not as a preamble to a lecture, just on its own, just once, just clearly. you have no idea what that costs you and what it means to hear.

i keep picking up my phone to send her something stupid and then remembering.

i'm so sorry i didn't pick up.