I'm unhappy.

I don't have anything witty to say, or anything clever. I just needed to be honest for once and just say it. I'm unhappy. I'm starting to forget those once familiar feelings of elation, of joy. I feel like my world stopped when my aunt passed. I haven't been able to muster an honest smile. The kind that you don't feel with your face, but the kind that you feel with everything you are. I used to be like that. I used to really laugh. I used to really smile. I always put up a front. I don't like to let people in. I just sing, gloss over life, tell every one that it's OK. I'm not. I'm not OK. I keep dropping hints that I need someone to just listen for a change and not a single person shuts their mouth to open an ear. I'm not angry. I understand. We all have lives to live. I just wish that the pause button wasn't stuck on mine. It's like I'm trapped in the moment that I found out that my Joy died. January sucks.



Today's also my younger brother's birthday. He would have been 20 today. Which, I admit, is the most bizarre thought to me. I can't picture him past that little blond-haired, blue-eyed baby boy that he remains as in my memories. You know what, I'm just going to go on for a minute here. It's my blog after all.



I have three memories of Kyle, my little buddy. I remember one morning when my mom was having trouble waking him up, as he was always a really heavy sleeper. I don't know if that was just how he was or if it was just the disease that he had. There's not a lot known about his disease, which means no one probably knows. But anyway, I remember I took one of his favorite toys, the kind where you either turn a little knob or push a buttion and it makes a fun little noise and a little figure pops up. If memory serves, it was a Sesame Street toy. I remember thinking Groucho was funny. So, I took the toy, laid it next to his head, and then just started pressing the buttons, one by one until I heard my little brother start crying.



Another time I remember standing in his bedroom while my mom was holding him on the floor. You couldn't really ever put him down because he would start crying since he couldn't breathe lying flat. I went into the kitchen and grabbed two baggies from a drawer. I put them on my hands like they were rubber gloves. My mom asked me what I was doing and I told her that I was pretending to be a doctor. She asked why. I said it was because it's all that Kyle knows and I wanted to play something that he liked. My brother was in and out of the hospital for his entire life. Once they figured out what he had they realized that there was nothing that they could do.



I have one more memory of my younger brother. As part of his treatment he was forced to sit in a carseat and suck on albuterol for a while a couple of times per day. My mom would always use this time to her andvantage and go outside to smoke. I would sit right in front of my brother the entire time she was smoking. I would just plop down and talk to him. I knew how much he hated his machine. He would cry and fuss; but, if I was talking to him he would calm down just a little bit. My last memory of him was when I was chatting up a storm, and while I did so my brother fell asleep. I knew how much he hated that thing. It was weird for him to fall asleep. I got scared but I couldn't really figure out why. I ran over to my brother, who was three years older, and told him that Kyle was asleep. He didn't understand why I was panicked and said "Let him sleep." I ran, frustrated, to my other brother, eight years my senior. "Kyle's asleep! He's asleep!" I kept crying. My elder sibling was just like "So, what?". I run down the hall to the front door just as my mom is coming in, I was screaming "He's asleep! He's asleep!". She understood what I meant immediately. She took him into her arms and yelled for my dad. I went to wake him up. He understood, too. My father called 911. I watched them take my brother away. I never saw him again.

Those are the first three memories of my life. I don't remember anything before that. It was like that was when my life started.

See, this is all I wanted. I wanted someone to just hear me out for a minute. I feel better now that I have just talked. I didn't even talk about what I really wanted to talk about, but it helped. Thank you all.