Is It Ever Good News? in Unafraid

Something’s wrong with my younger brother.

I’m the oldest, he’s 19, and he’s been away at college for awhile now. This is his sophomore year, and the college he’s going to is about a 3 and a half hour drive to the other side of the state in the Big City. It’s about as different a place as you can get compared to home. Compared to where we’ve been raised. But he had his heart set on it. I get it. When you’re raised in a small little country city like this with not a lot to do as a kid, you’re itching to get the hell out of here by the time you turn 18, so when it came time for him to go to college and he chose the university out in the Big City, it didn’t really surprise me too much. At first after the move, everything seemed to be doing pretty alright. Not too many problems his freshman year except he had to learn to budget his money the hard way a few times. (Lol.)

This year, however, things have taken quite the downturn. It feels like it’s not even my some brother anymore sometimes. I could go into great, great detail about everything that’s been going on with him, but I won’t. May be my journal, but it’s still his business. Point being, 2 of his friends and 1 teacher from his school have personally called my mom just today because they were concerned because my brother has been behaving erratically for the past several days. Like, behavior that is completely unlike him. And, like, we know he smokes weed (he’s a college kid living on dorms, who doesn’t?) but like, the way that he’s been behaving lately is like he’s on something else entirely. But he swears he isn’t. But multiple people, myself included, have noticed a change in mood for several days now. And it’s drastic. To make matters worse, his attendance to his classes has plummeted and if he keeps missing classes then he’s in danger of losing his financial aid.

And I’m not entirely sure what to do.

Mom’s going up there this weekend to try and talk to him and sort through all this and she was practically begging me to come with her. I mean, what was I going to do, say no? But I keep getting this feeling like she wants us to go up there and my brother will just listen to me because, I dunno, he “looks up to me” or something and I’ll all of a sudden have the magic words to set my brother on the straight and narrow and get him all sorted out. But I don’t know what the fuck to do. I don’t know what the fuck to say. I don’t even know how to fix my own damn life, much less my brother’s. How am I supposed to help him?

I feel like every time I walk through that damn door when I get home from work I have bad news waiting for me.

When I was driving home from work today, I felt a temporary state of true peace that you rarely experience. The window was down. The sun was setting. The country roads were winding, and the music from my bluetooth was hitting juuuust right. You can’t replicate that feeling. I slowed down actually. Nobody was behind me, I wanted it to last a little longer. And then when I finally get home, I’m confronted with this knowledge about my brother. As I was sitting there listening to my mom go on about my brother, I wished I could go back in time 15 minutes ago when I was driving down the country roads and everything was alright.

I just wish I knew what to do to help others, maybe then I could finally help myself.