Growing up is hard but nonetheless, it is inevitable. The worst part is understanding. It is usually such a beautiful thing, the ability to understand, but not in this case. You get to not only see your own mind grow, but you get to experience it as well. Growing up means having a deeper understanding of what is going around you, and these things aren't always beautiful. I am 18 now and I have just recently began to understand why my brother had to act as a parent when I was a baby, why he threw massive fits when I was a toddler, and why he rebelled when I was an adolescent. I began to be able to comprehend that while my mother wasn't there for me, he was. But who was there for him? Eventually we got taken away from my mother but that just posed a whole new array of problems. He went from a space of complete an total freedom to a whole new universe of deadlines and rules at just a few year old. That's a hard adjustment to make when you can hardly even understand that it's happening.
I now realize why he would run after me when I fell, even though we now had people in our lives to take care of it. It wasn't his responsibility anymore. Role change was a new idea he had to assimilate into as well. Now in his late 20's, he is a heroin addict with a kid on the way. Every time someone hears this, I get the same response, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry." But I'm not, and you shouldn't be either. It is his choice and everything happens for a reason, you can't have the good without the bad, right? Living with him for 18 years has taught me that he is strong enough for anything and everything, even to get out of this if he wanted to. But if he doesn't want to, I also understand. The world has been a cruel place to him, but how self-centered of an idea? The world does not revolve around you (it actually revolves around the sun and while you are just as bright, you are not quite as important.) The point is, he has people who care about him and see him as more than a drug addict.
He has a kid on the way; I like to think about the way he cared for me and my other brother and trust that he is going to be a wonderful dad. I like to believe that having a child is going to re-channel that love and carefulness that he displayed so passionately with us. But that may just be wishful thinking, he is not the same person I grew up with. He is empty, he is drained. He is like a dried out tub that can only feel all of life's sweetness when it is plugged up and filled with liquid euphoria. It is easy to see the person who cared for me in my most fragile states as a father, but it is also difficult to picture the man who overdosed and died on an ambulance before being brought back to life, as a parent. It is infinitely more puzzling to see these two versions as the same person.
As a sister, it is easy for me to want to take him in and care for him the way he once did for me, but as a sister, it is also easy for me to want him to get busted and go to jail. That way, he would have no choice but to be drug free and I wouldn't have to be in a constant state of worry over him. What isn't easy, though, is accepting that both of these fates are out of my hands. When your brother is addicted to drugs, you have to live with worry weighing on you 24/7. You have to daydream about the "what if's" to avoid dealing with the bitter reality. You have to be in a constant battle of "I hate you" and "I love you." When you have a brother who is addicted to drugs, you have to ask yourself "is there anything I could have done?" while also comforting your other family members, ensuring that it was all out of their hands, out of their control.
I listen to my brother's talk of how depressed he is and how his anxiety is out of control. I watch him avoid social situations when he's sober but become the most talkative person in the room when he's inebriated; and he has the most beautiful mind. The most colorful mind. He doesn't think or feel like everyone else does, everything about him goes so much deeper than the norm. I only see this side when the drugs are assisting, though, and I'm afraid he doesn't realize this importance he holds otherwise. It's an endless cycle, but if you tell him, he won't listen. He understands everything except what he really needs to understand the most. And that is the beauty and the tragedy of growing up.
