It is hard to believe something so simple can make you cry and wish for things to be the way they were. The other night for dinner I made fried zucchini as I was dipping them in eggs and flour tears started to run down my cheek. I remember every summer the first thing my brother and I would want is fried zucchini. Our mom would never batter them she just cut it up and fried it in a pan on the stove top. Two summers ago during a period of sobriety my brother were watching Paula Deen and she fried tomatoes and she made the batter and we looked at each other in a moment of WTH why didn't we ever think of that. We immediately went bought zucchini and started battering and frying. OMG delish!!! We ate four zucchini that day. We laughed and made fun of how our mom made it. I remember he hugged me told me I was the bestest big sister. ahhhh sitting here typing this I have tears streaming. I miss him so much. I hurt like he is not alive anymore. I haven't seen him or heard from him since the middle of May. I am mourning my brother and he is still alive. I remember all the good times as if there may never be another. I look at my best friend and my husband who have both lost their brothers to tragedy and I feel bad thinking the way I do because he is still alive. But I also know the further he travels this road of addiction the faster he is working his way to death. I love my brother and I will love him with all of my heart til the day I die. I wish the addicts could for just one day be in our shoes and see what it is like from our perspective. In their sick and twisted brain we don't love them. Where in fact it is quite the contrary we sometimes love them to death. I enabled my brother from the day he was born in 1980 until Mother's Day 2012. I don't want to help him kill himself any longer. I have detached with love. I told him I loved him and he was welcome back in my life when he decided to live sober and be a productive person in society. I told him I will never stop loving him I have however stopped enabling him. If he feels that that is not loving him I can't change that. The only thing I can change is me and how I am going to deal with my addiction to his addiction. I am sure there will be many other things simple things that I will do that I will have tears running down my face but that's OK I am allowed to remember things just the way they were.....
Lots of love and healing,
Heidi
I got tears in my eyes just reading this. I have had many moments like this lately. At my new job there are lots of High School and Pre-Schools kids in and out all day so it's like seeing my son at those ages: innocence and .... the dark side.
ReplyDeleteI hope your brother and you can have fried zucchini again and laugh and enjoy.
In google I typed in the search bar, "I wonder what it's like to have a brother who is not a drug addict" and I found your blog. this is the first thing I read and it is comforting to find someone who is in a similar position as me. My younger brother (whom I was extremely close with) is a drug addict as well and I feel many of the same feelings you feel. I miss him every day and we still live in the same home. Remember, we are lucky that we have any good memories of our brothers at all. I'm sorry for your pain, I know how it feels. I will continue to follow you.
ReplyDeleteThe benefit of any form of outpatient treatment is the fact that addicts can continue to go to work, school, and keep up with family responsibilities. Addiction Intervention
ReplyDeleteI know this is an old entry, but I had to comment. I've been there. I have SO been there. my family struggled with my older brother's addiction for over two decades: rehab, jail, rehab, rehab, jail, jail... I started to feel like an only child. I grieved the loss of my brother while he was still alive. Sometimes I even wished he would just die and get it over with instead of dragging it out and making us all watch him slowly kill himself and destroy our family.
ReplyDeleteAnd then...he died. Last month. And I realize how clueless I had been.
Right now all I know is that it all just sucks. And it's so hard. So, so hard. I hope your family has a better outcome than mine.