Wading Through Part 1

I’ve got so much inside my head that I don’t know where to begin. I don’t know how to blog about it because I feel like if I open the channels of my fingers, everything will spill out and I won’t be able to stop.

How long does it take for ‘shock’ to wear off? How long does post-traumatic stress syndrome last in a person who has been through a traumatic event? I don’t suppose that I have PTSD, but I’m just wondering a bit about shock in general because here I am, near the end of April, and Bryant has been in jail since November 5^th; yet, I am still in shock. Perhaps the delay is due to the fact that it took a while to really REALIZE that he was IN jail and staying there. It’s not that I wasn’t willing to realize this, but I got a lot of mixed information about just how much trouble he was in. After talking to his lawyer myself, I realize just how much trouble it is, and it makes perfect sense, like I should have realized it all along, and I’m angry that I let anyone sugar coat it for me. I am angry that for a while, I thought he might get out sooner than later. But I suppose in God’s sovereign forbearance, He allowed me to know what He knew I could take as I could take it. Actually, everything I knew in November was hard enough, and December… who is to say I could have handled more.

Mom surmised that perhaps we still wait in such shock b/c we know the heart of Bryant, because we know the person he is on the inside, who would give you the shirt off his back if you asked. I see her point, and that is true about my brother, but he is also the thief that deserves to be sitting in prison. She agreed to that as well. He would too. I think that’s something wrong in our culture, even our Christian culture. We can’t accept the dichotomy of how incredibly good and incredibly bad we can be at the same time. It’s like the mafia hit man who murders a man in cold blood but waits on his ailing mother hand-and-foot. Perhaps the brutal thief who is also a loving parent- the kid who continually steals yet is so generous at the same time. We can be incredibly good while we are incredibly bad. And the former can’t be reason to forgo consequences for our bad actions. Nor should the latter be reasons to never be given the benefit of the doubt. Yet it seems like the world is ‘good or bad,’ ‘black or white.’ This is like a theme in life right now- it’s coming up in my family, in my personal life, in my job… the juxtaposition of beauty and sin, and then the utter shock of figuring out how to deal with the truth of it instead of brushing the sin under the rug to hide it, or casting the sinner out in the cold while ignoring that she’s anything redeemable. How do we love righteousness and hate evil when we ourselves are both righteous and evil. I suppose in actuality it plays out through a serious of choices, simple small steps, small actions. But when I sit back and think of the big picture, it is most certainly overwhelming.

So here I am in April. His next calendar date for sentencing isn’t until June. He will have been in jail for 7 months then. 7 months. I know exactly where he’s been every day for the past 5 or so…I know what’s he has worn…what he’s eaten… what he’s done… sometimes during the day, I have to take a break, a time out, and just stop b/c it hits me, that he is in jail, sitting there, where I last left him, in that same orange jump suit, with the same wrist band and identification number, waiting for Friday when he gets to see someone from my family for 30 minutes if they can make it out there. He hasn’t had his favorite food…He hasn’t been with family for a holiday. He hasn’t seen his dog. He hasn’t hugged his mother or his girlfriend. He hasn’t wrestled with his nephew. He hasn’t sat at the table with his sister and laughed. He hasn’t picked up his phone. He hasn’t showered without being watched… or gone to the bathroom in private… he hasn’t chosen his food or his television or anything really. And it’s not that I am overcome with feeling ‘sorry’ for him, like this was forced upon him and he did nothing wrong. That’s what gets me. Sometimes I think people don’t get that you can feel such sorrow even though you all know the person is getting a just consequence for the action. Or maybe people do get it. Maybe I just want it validated. But I’m just overcome. He’s my baby brother…and he’s sitting there every day.

I could write about how I have no control over it. How none of us do…how this whole thing is revealing to me so much more about how much I just LOATHE not being able to control something to some degree.

I could write about how I feel like I can more relate with someone who has lost a loved one, a child or sibling, now. I don’t mean I CAN relate. I just mean, I could relate more than previously. We have lost Bryant, at least for now, in a way. And it’s been a grieving process. There is no freedom. He is not ours the way he was, and we had no choice in that. He was taken from us by power outside of our own. We didn’t want this… I’m not saying he did or blaming someone. I’m just saying…. This is not self-imposed by rational and communal choice.

I could write about how everyone thinks this is a wake-up call for Bryant about his life and getting it straightened out and on the right path, and how I think it’s a wake-up call for my whole family back in Georgia and even for myself to. I don’t think they see it though. I don’t think they realize that they need help, or saving, from anything. And that makes me angry. This isn’t just about Bryant, and if, Lord-willing, Bryant gets better, he won’t ever be able to live there either until they all pursue health too… but right now, everyone seems so concentrated on HIM, HIS ADDICITON, WHAT HE DID WRONG, HIM GETTING HELP, HIM GETTING REHAB, HIM GETTING HIS LIFE TOGETHER, and I am losing what little patience God has grown in me because I want to scream GET THE FREAKING LOGS OUT OF YOUR FREAKING EYES PEOPLE! YOU THINK ALL THIS IS JUST ABOUT HIM?? YOU ALL REALLY OKAY WITH HOW EVERYTHING, APART FROM HIM, IS GOING IN YOUR LIFE?

I could write about so much that comes into my mind. It just doesn’t stop.

I remember the last time he hugged me. He hugged me really tight. It was in October, after I left from visiting for the state fair. He’d wanted to take me to the airport but was unable to get ready to leave that morning due to severe anxiety attacks. He’d just lost his job again because of anxiety. He hugged me so tight, crying, telling me he loved me, he was sorry, and he missed me. I hugged him back, this sobbing, huge, man who was my baby brother and who I loved more than I could express. I wanted to be able to transplant any wisdom or healing or knowledge I’d gained through the years into his body so that he’d feel better. I wanted to switch places with him. I hated seeing him hurt, and I hated that I couldn’t make him get help. And I knew enough to know that I didn’t necessarily know what the best ‘help’ was, but I just knew he needed SOMETHING….ANYTHING…other than just going back into his room and shutting the door.  But instead I had to go to Atlanta. Crystal drove me. I didn’t know that was the last time I’d hug him. If I had, I wouldn’t have let go. It’s good I didn’t know. I did know, however, that what was going on was serious, and it wasn’t going to just ‘get better.’ Something big had to happen.

Within 2 weeks, he was in jail. He’d been caught breaking into a pharmacy while trying to steal prescription anxiety meds. He ran from police. He wrecked his car. He was caught, and reality could be tempered no longer. There were no more chances. Payment had to be made now for mistakes, and everything that seemed overwhelming and daunting before just gained a couple hundred more pounds of intimidation. Three weeks before turning 27, and in jail with multiple charges at him including breaking a previous probation sentence.

The last time I saw him, I walked into the little 12 by 12 room with the stools and the glass window with telephones to talk to the inmates, just like in the movies, and there he was, with this smile and the same laugh that he always has that puts people at ease. He’s so jovial and friendly. But then when our eyes met and he said hello, there were tears, in both our eyes, because the honest truth is, in a way, even though I’m some 31 year old woman now, and he’s some 27 year old man, we were still just these two little blonde haired/green eyed kids, a boy and girl, who were sitting there as kids. And I could remember being a kid with him and how we both just wanted a safe, loving, accepting, stable, family. And it was so sad that it wasn’t there. And the fighting- oh the fighting….constantly. And the yelling, and screaming, and manipulation… and most of the time we were even fighting with each other in the midst of it or taking sides with mom or dad or Buffie, but every once in a while, I think we’d catch each other’s eye…maybe when we were playing make believe or something, and we’d share the same wish… that somehow everything would just get better and not be so dangerous and unsafe anymore. That the warzone would transform, and it would be safe to feel and express emotions and thoughts… and insecurities. That we could be free to fail and to find our strengths… we had these longings… longings that God gave us, but we were just kids…in an unfortunate situation… figuring out other means of trying to get those needs and longings met…

So he’s sorry. And he keeps apologizing. He feels so guilty that he screwed up and tried to get his longings met this way and now has hurt us all. And I tell him that it’s okay. Not that it’s okay as in I don’t care he’s in jail, but that it’s okay that he messed up, that I still love him and want him as my brother. He says he doesn’t know why. I wish I could explain to him how I couldn’t imagine it another way… I say I’m standing by him, and will walk with him, and we’ll work through all this. He says he hopes so. I hope so. I hope God does not give up on us. I’m terrified, but I don’t want to let him know that. I feel like he’s scared enough. I should put on a brave-face, but I’m terrified and filled with doubts. Will God redeem his life? Will God rescue him and transform and heal him?

You see, it’s been all these years, and the family, they didn’t change. I moved away. And MY life changed, but if I go there, it is much of the same. It has not been healed and transformed. So I fear. I know God has answered my prayers for myself, but more than that, I have prayers for my brother… will those be answered? How? And then what of my mother?

I can’t write anymore now.