This is my first blog. I feel overwhelmed... what do you say on your first blog? Do I give a really long monologue of everything that's been going on in my life for the past year?
So I'll just start with the last situation that has been on my mind.
I was in Chicago the past couple days, but before that I was thinking a lot about my brother. He is up in Northern Ca for school, and I haven't seen him since last Christmas. I tried contacting him and asking what he thought if we flew him down next weekend to surprise my mom; we're taking her out for her belated birthday then. He was saddened to say he couldn't make it; he had too many projects that were due around that time. No clue what he means by that, I assume school things. And he has a part time job with a big nursery up north.
My brother Kyle is my little baby bro. I beat him up a bit growing up... okay, a lot. I slammed on my brakes once while driving when he was unbuckled and jumping into the front upon my request and I laughed as his face hit the dashboard radio, hard. His face was bruised and swollen. I said sorry after his crying subsided and he immediately forgave me and dropped it. He didn't even tell our parents about it.
He was 8 at the time. Around then, I knew this kid was really special. After that, I started to observe that he was never one to judge or make fun of people, he got along with everyone, and he was social, extremely easy-going, incredibly sweet-natured, and got a kick out of even the simple and small things in life. While I was embarrassed that my parents drove a really old car and I would tell my dad to drop me off a block away from school so no one would see it, and we didn't live in a nice house and I would never invite any friends over, Kyle never cared, in fact, I don't think he ever saw the difference between the way we lived and the way others lived. Or if he did see it, it mattered zilch to him. He carried the self-esteem that my sister and I couldn't manage to find until our later years.
His life changed early in high school. He fell into a dark hole that no one but himself could get out of. I felt myself losing touch with him prior to and during the dark hole time (2 years). I didn't start out heartbroken, I was mad. Mad at Kyle. I could not understand how little he suddenly cared about us and life. When I saw him, I called him selfish. I didn't know or realize at that time the severity of this dark hole, that this monster takes over a person, makes them incapable of being in control of their own life and decisions. During those two years, my brother was not Kyle. This monster had held Kyle hostage, had eaten his soul, and made the body of Kyle not care about his family, his friends, his school, his life.
Towards the end of the two years I started to learn that I quite possibly may never have Kyle back. The next step we foresaw was to just watch Kyle disappear into oblivion; into another dark world in which he would not function ever again as a normal human being, much less the amazing kid he was before this. By this time, it was a common thing that brother was gone for months at a time. We tried everything. Then I started to really freak out. I didn't sleep. I drove the streets at night looking for him, I phone-bombed and screamed at his friends and tried to prosecute his adult "dark hole" contacts.
This was when I really learned what a whole new type of loss was like. I started laying in bed every night and telling myself to prepare to go on with a brother who was as good as dead, and to try to get used to it. My heart was shattered. My parents were completely broken, and life was miserable, scary, and felt hopeless.
By some still unknown miracle... Kyle came back to us at around 17. On his own. We didn't believe it at first, it wasn't as if a light switch was flipped on and we were all back on board, we were wary. But it was him alright, Kyle, my beloved, hilarious, talented little brother, he was all the way back in the flesh and mind. He ended up finishing high school, and signed up for college, got a job, and was on his way to starting an adult life.
We've had a few conversations about what happened, and although I'll never know what exactly his turning point was (and it's also occurred to me that maybe I wouldn't want to know) to make him climb out of his dark hole, I couldn't be more grateful.
I've learned throughout those 2 years that getting out of something so dark and so all-consuming, soul-rotting, and life-changing, might be hands-down the hardest battle in life one has to overcome. I say this because getting out of that is something only the eaten-up, withered, and totally altered victim can do, and no one and nothing else can do it for them, and because of that, Kyle is my hero. He is the strongest person I know.
My mother had at least one miscarriage before Kyle, she and my father wanted a boy to finish out the family after my sister and I were born. Then finally, after so much hoping and waiting, this gorgeous little blonde cute thing was born, and he's changed my life and taught me more than I'll ever know about struggle and hardship, and overcoming the odds. After my parents' tragic loss of their unborn, Kyle finally came along. And yes, of course I'm sure the child who was supposed to come before Kyle was going to be amazing too, but I wouldn't trade Kyle for the world, nor for anyone else. And this last paragraph goes out to my friend of our own two-person "pssshhhsshffpuhpuh" club.
