Not-so-baby Brother

One of the saddest moments of my life.

Today was the first time I saw it... that look in his eye.  It was on an uneventful evening.  We decided to run to the grocery store for milk or ice cream or something.  I can't remember.  Mostly, we just went for the heck of it.  He likes those short little trips to the store.  I usually don't feel like going, but he doesn't take the answer "no" very well.  I usually give in, mostly because I like making him happy.  It's the little things anyway, right?  So we were on the way there, listening to some some song.  It was something upbeat and funky, something with a lot of bass.  It may have been another new dubstep song I was introducing him to.  It know it wasn't too bad because he was smiling a small but genuine smile and bobbing his head to the music.  

Then something changed.  I remember the exact moment.  We were driving around the turn behind the middle school, heading towards town.  I glanced to my right and saw him sitting in the passenger seat, staring blankly ahead at the road.  The smile was gone from his face.  He was no longer listening to the music.  I don't even think he heard it.  I remember feeling like I was an outsider, looking in on him during a private moment, like he wasn't really there with me.  I looked back at the road and asked him what was wrong.  I looked back over at him.  He shifted his gaze to be briefly, a second at the most, and murmured a hauntingly empty, "nothing" while shaking his head in short, quick movements.  He returned his gaze to the road, looking ahead but not seeing where we were.  It as in that very brief moment of eye contact, that small and seemingly insignificant moment that I saw the first hint of what was to come.

It was my first confirmation.  It was the first time I knew, without a doubt, that he would not be the lucky one.  He would not be the one to evade the darkness that ran through his blood.  I knew that look in his eyes.  I had seen those same empty eyes time and time again in the mirror. In that brief moment, I could see it perfectly clearly...the vacancy.  Where there should have been a reflection of joy, of peace, of innocence, there was instead a hopelessness, a very small pleading.  I knew in that moment.  I saw clearly the struggle that was to come,  the fight for happiness.  I had hoped he would have been able to live without that struggle.  I had hoped he would have been able to hold on to his blissful childhood ignorance... ignorant of the cruelty of the world...immune to the darkness that had begun to leak into his existence.  

I wondered what the next few years would hold for him as I recalled myself at that age.  In retrospect, those should have been the simplest years of my life, carefree and happy.  They were not.  A fierce blackness had slowly begun blossoming in my mind.  I was depressed.  I was angry at the world. I was angry at myself for being depressed.  This anger and anxiety and hopelessness manifested itself into scars.  I let it all leak onto my skin in an attempt to rid it from my body.  I wanted no help.  It made me angry that I could not handle it on my own.  If I would have simply reached out, or simply answered "no" on one of the many occasions I heard the question, "Are you ok?", then things would have been so incredibly different.  

Was this the kind of future that was waiting for him? What road would he choose? Drugs? A blade? Alcohol? Why couldn't he have been spared this altogether?  Would he end up on a lifelong cocktail of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and anxiety medications like his mother? Like me?  I struggled to process the weight of that moment, the heaviness that settled in my chest as I realized that this was the beginning  for him.  This was it.  

I never imagined that such a small moment could leave such an impression in my memory.  It makes sense, though.  I had never really accepted the fact that he was growing up, that he would inevitably have to face the same big, scary, adult world that had broken me.  That's the sad truth.  I knew then that his childhood would not be able to shield him for much longer.  I made a promise to him then, an unspoken promise that I would do everything in my power to always be there for him, to ease his burden in any way possible, and to help him navigate through the pain.  If I could, I bear it all for him so he'd never have to know what it was like.  After all... he is my little brother.