It is always so surreal when I really take the time to think about the gravity of it all. When I was floored by the news that evening of his death, I didn't want to believe it. I wanted to run and hide, jump out of my own skin... I wanted to wake up from this nightmare. For 18 years that is what I have done.. run.
This year, Elias has been dead for almost as long as he was alive. At 6 months sober, this is the first year I have faced this fact without the assistance of drugs and / or alcohol.
When Elias died, something in me was born. If addiction has a gestation period, mine was roughly 16 yrs. Growing from a seed that had undoubtedly been planted at my conception, like Godzilla, my addiction was awoken by an earthquake deep under a sea of chaos. I needed to cope. I needed to escape. I needed this not to be real. Experimenting with the effects produced by drugs and alcohol worked for me. There is a phrase "trouble will find me" well, I went through a period of time where I was set on finding that trouble first.
Fast forward to the present, that seed has grown into full blown alcoholism and multiple addictions. I am not blaming my brothers untimely death as the reason I am an addict. I would have turned out this way no matter what. It was just the timing and catalyst that my addiction needed to take flight. I had the itch to fly and I flew.
But in this cycle of life, death and rebirth. I think 18 yrs is an appropriate time as any to put my addiction to rest.
Waging war.
I will leave you with this, written 3 yrs ago, and another time I was set on beating the odds of addiction
The Wizard
15 years ago I was a week away from my 16th birthday, which meant until the end of September I would only be 2 years younger than my older brother Elias. I looked up to him in a lot of ways and I remember feeling closer, cooler and not so little for 5 months. Then came April 27th 1996....the day my older brother stopped aging, a day so surreal that anything could hurt my hero, let alone take him away forever. We grew up in a double wide trailer on 20 acres in West Virginia, and like most older brothers he antagonized me relentlessly.
One time when I was 3 he dumped a bucket of roofing tar on my head while we had crawled under the elevated chicken coop to play.... he exclaimed to my livid mother that I had asked him to do it. Being a redhead, I think he was jealous of my bright blonde hair, and obviously wanted them to cut it all off.
Our antics were not always one sided, as I remember him riding his Huffy down our Dirt road while speeding past kicking me. I found a branch about as thick and long as a broom stick and promptly speared it into his front spokes sending him end over end into the hard dirt. Another time while helping our dad build a tree house in the woods behind our trailer, Elias was chasing me around bullying me, until I picked up a 16 penny nail and chased him back.... I never did catch him, but in his frantic escape he tripped and took a sharp stick through his cheek earning him a couple of stitches in the process. Even better was the fact that school pictures were days later and his included his smiling face with a butterfly bandage front and center. My poor mother...
We were not always heathens, these were not everyday occurrences, just ones that stand out as instances of brotherly devotion. As my older brother, he always had more size on me so I had to be agile. Elias was always smarter than me, so I had to be more clever. Looking back, I wouldn't have grown up any other way. For all the lickings I took when he wanted to try out the latest wrestling moves he and his sidekicks witnessed on TV that day, it ultimately made me more resilient. A quality maybe he knew I would need through out this life. Maybe he was preparing me for when I was the older brother.... As the younger sibling, I feel I got the upper hand as I picked up all his qualities, intelligence, wittiness, plus the ability to adapt new ones he couldn't learn from a older brother.
I also learned from my brother to follow my dreams, and not live life for what others "think" or what social norms may be. Elias was gifted with intelligence. He was always in honor classes throughout school, his peers jealous of how he didn't have to study for advanced Algebra 2 classes and still ace tests. He had a full state college scholarship offered to him upon graduating High school.... instead Elias chose to follow his passion of skiing, moved to Lake Tahoe with a handful of other ski bums, worked the night shift at 7-11 and searched for fresh powder runs during the day.
Unfortunately a knee injury ended his season and ability to continue his excellent journey. He came home in Late March of 1996, and for the first time of our lives, we got along. He took me around his friends, not as his younger brother, but as a cohort. A month later, 15 years ago was the last time I'd get that chance....
Forever young, but never Forgotten.
