january 18, 2010 seems like a long time ago


almost eleven months ago, 2010 resolution #7 was "see brian more...". it didn't really work out the way that i wanted it to. i could claim weak-ass excuses like "how time flies" or the girls or church or work or softball or the blog or too much time on facebook or too much time losing track of friends, but all of them would be just that. weak. and ass.

savannah is a long way away, even as the crow flies, sure. the sheer thought of the six to seven hours in the car with girls that are going to go apeshit halfway there has played a big part in my selfish ass presenting the "it's december. i work in retail. i gotta work." card year after year when sarah or sarah and hannah or sarah and hannah and caroline have made the trip for the last however long without me. believe me. it's been a long however long.

last year, brian was there and the girls got to see him without me. i had missed tons of time due to my surgery and there was no way i could get away. it made my heart warm, though, to know that hannah and caroline would get to hang out with him, and they did. i was jealous, but happy at the same time.

our relationship has never been the most functional even when it was our "normal". lord knows we weren't the only children of divorce in the world, but it felt like it a lot of the time. my friends, in particular, all were from families whose parents had stayed true to their vows. i don't know if that made them happy or not, but going to their houses to hang out had a very weird and comfortable vibe to it. going to my friends' houses felt, for me, like walking into a norman rockwell painting. i know that any of my childhood friends that might read this blog are rolling their eyes right now at the thought of their home being the picture of americana. whatareyougonnado? when you are child of divorce, you see, especially one that was old enough when their parents separated to know that divorce was some fucked up shit, you (i) find yourself pining for that societal feeling of "normal" for the rest of your (my) life. as you (i) get older, you (i) realize along the way a sad fact, that you're (i'm) searching for the pot at the end of the rainbow, but it doesn't stop you (me) from wanting it. badly. my friends had it. and i didn't. breakfast in the morning. dinner together around a table. family functions. both parents at open house. simple shit. shit that children of marriage take for granted. or maybe they don't. maybe they realize that kind of stuff is special. for a kid that started putting up barriers pretty young, i convinced myself that they took it for granted. and it gnawed at me for years. when i came home from a friend's house, nothing was "normal". my mom did everything in her power to make it feel that way, and for that i will be forever indebted, but it just...wasn't. not the "normal" that i told myself i wanted. when i was eight, nine, ten years old, i just wanted my parents to be back together again. i was eight when my parents divorced. brian was four. our relationship was never going to be functional. and the fucked up thing about it was that it had nothing to do with us.

growing up, most of my memories of brian and our time together have been appropriately revisioned or romanticized, because remembering the bad stuff is a fucking waste of time. we didn't have a ton in common and we held that against each other a lot. i've told the story before, but i will say that if you've never had a younger brother hurl a throwing star at you with ill-intentions, well, you haven't lived. thank god, by that standard, i have. our age difference and the fact that i was an asshole didn't help our cause as we got older. brian did his thing. i did mine. we enjoyed each other's company every now and again. played some video games. went to the movies. nothing crazy. we fought. a lot. never to the point of regret. i loved him. more than anything. i just didn't know how to do love right. probably still don't. in the midst of all sorts of chaos, though, i think about how much i must've let him down...

i figured out how much brian meant to me too late. he was already gone down a dark path that i couldn't save him from by the time i did. he would admit that. i tried a couple times. to save him. to save us. maybe more than a couple. i felt like i was doing him a favor. then i felt like i was enabling bad habits. we cut ties again and/or again. i said cliched bullshit like, "he's got to want to help himself". i prayed for him, not even knowing what that really means. a year would pass. i would call my mom and ask her about him. "he's doing okay." or "i haven't heard from him in a while." were the stock answers. occasionally, her voice would perk up a little and you could tell they had a really nice conversation. those were good days. more time passed. he did some more rehab. he tried to sort things out at our aunt's house. that didn't work. then he moved to florida. finally landed in savannah. i figured out how much brian meant to me too late once. it makes me happy that i learned from that mistake and made better efforts.

i think about him all the time. and i think back. i think about what a disservice i was to him as a big brother. how the same shit that i felt so sorry for myself about was ten times worse for him. i think about the little kid that was thrown out to pasture by people that should have loved him the most and i wish that i would have had the courage to make things better. to appear as the ghost of "what the fuck are you thinking???" to those that should've loved him most and allow them to see the error of their ways. but i didn't. or i couldn't. or i was too immature at the time to grasp what was happening.

after we reconnected a few years ago, it was how it always should have been. it took one conversation to hear in his voice what i hoped that he heard in mine. that i loved him. that i had always wished him well, just not always in very practical or helpful ways.

since then, we've been as functional as two brothers that are six hours apart can be i suppose. i think we miss each other. i know i miss him. the brian that i talk to now is the one that i took for granted growing up. smart. caring. tender. tough. when all the dcd shit hit the fan a couple years back, he was the one that i wished i had by my side, not to beat anyone up but to be the explicit voice of reason that only someone that cared about me but had also lived their life outside of the perverted walls of "the church" could be. when i found out i had something growing inside of me last summer that wasn't supposed to be there, i knew i needed him to be with me, feeling confident that just his presence alone would scare the surgeon into not fucking up when he cut me up and pulled things out.

i see me talking about him now and i realize how much of a selfish asshole i still am. i don't deserve his care or concern any more than anyone that ever hung him out to dry does, but, when i asked him to come, he came. that's who he is.

i've told him and i hope he knows that i would kick ass for him, too, if he needed it. i would even listen, too. i can't wait to listen to him this weekend. as much fun as i am sure our family will have, as much good as i know it will be for me to be with sarah and hannah and caroline with her dad's side of the family, seeing brian will be what i think about when the girls are going apeshit somewhere on the macon side of atlanta. i'll think of him chasing me around the house, throwing shit at me. i'll wish things weren't for him the way they were, because people i know who claim "i hit the bottom" haven't seen it. brian has. he has the scars, many of them self-inflicted, to prove it. once upon a time, if he ever stared at you really hard, you kind of wanted to pee your pants a little bit. he was that guy.

that stare is still there, i bet, if he needed it to be. i see a different look in his eyes now. a glimmer that personifies hope and the kind of person i want my girls to grow up to be. smart. self-sufficient. strong. and sweet.

see you in a couple days, dude. when i do, i hope time will move slowly.