(disclaimer: i'm sorry for all the hold steady but this is my most recent addiction; i f-ing love this song and it is the only youtube version i can pull up...patiently waiting for pool parties)

excuses and half truths and fortified wine

Jun 4, 2008
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i know i'm no angel

Lord, I'm Discouraged

once she's got a couple drinks in
she's probably gonna tell you
you ain't doing anything right
and then you'll roll your eyes
and then you'll probably fight

my siblings are my best friends.
let me say that again.
my SIBLINGS ARE MY BEST FRIENDS.
seriously.
no one understands what growing up with KC and tom is like besides them. and they have always saved my ass.on everything. even when i was completely wrong - they defend me - and i them - because if my parents did anything right, it was instilling the importance of family. i remember once, being young, 9 or 10 or so, and my little brother decided that ghost riding his bike was cool. (ghost riding is when you run alongside your bike and then push it to see how far it can go - without you on it, of course). my father, who would get pissed if we ruined our socks by walking shoeless in the grass, caught the event. he got pissed - he always got pissed. my brother was called off the blacktop to some room punishment. and i, who was not doing anything wrong, was also called inside. why? i had not been ghost riding bikes. but i was there. and he was my little brother. i should have taught him better. i should have stopped him, or explained how to appreciate your possessions (i never fully grasped this lesson- things are just that, things). so i got in trouble - maybe more then him - because i wasn't watching out for sean. i wasn't protecting him. my little brother.
these scenarios are numerous. we watched out for each other - we had to. i wrote many of sean's school reports, as my older sisters wrote mine. and i learned to tie his shoelaces, because he needed them tied. and when my solid family was shattering, i moved out of my parents' home to a rental with a melancholy sister and my best friend.
there is nothing like family - or so i have always believed.
sean and i have this closeness. this birthright. this order. we get each other - he is my secret keeper. he is my confidant, he is my cellar. his baby blue eyes saw the parents i experienced; but it is an odd scheme. he is the youngest, and the only boy, so i have formed bonds with my older sisters on the fact that we are woman - not that sean and them haven't developed their own relationships, they most certainly have, but i have always felt like a bridge between the older set and the younger, the girls and the boy, the drunk parents and the sober ones, the past and the present. i am the third born. a middle child, but not really. my mother has always said that i am the oldest of her second set, and it is the truth, six years separate me from the next oldest. i hold no middle child syndrome, but everything of the protective older sibling, as the third born, i am the oldest of the second set. so i relate to my oldest sibling on the common grounds of parental relationships, on dreams, and ambition and passion. i relate to my next sister on the basis of poetry. arts, and depression. and i relate to my brother because we shared the first twenty years together, with the same watchful eyes, on the same gray world.
but sean has always had this anger. this rage. this dad quality (this dad quality and this dad quality and this dad quality) he is the sweetest, most sincere, helpful, thoughtful, loving person on the planet and yet, sometimes, he is the biggest asshole i have ever met. when we were young, and my dad was being a jerk off, sean and i would crawl to the haven of my bedroom and hide. i would curse my father to an early grave, but sean would defend him. no matter what. sean would cry tears to stop me from hating dad, even when dad's anger was directed to sean. sean protected him. but years of growth and separation have created a major rift in that relationship - one that may never be fixed - because sometimes, they are the same person. sometimes gin and rum and vodka morph sean into dad. sometimes sean is an asshole.
i worked all weekend. its memorial day - the begining of summer - and i wait tables at a seaside restaraunt in a seasonal town, where money is made from may to september. i was tired and bored and in need of some sleep, so i could work tomorrow and make more money then i should be allowed to carry. but sean was drinking and partyiing and celebrating. he was doing his own thing. on my time. in my life. in my presence. when we are well past the stage of having to deal with each others demons. but we do anyway, because we are siblings.
he gets so angry. jekyll and hyde. one minute he is laughing, funny, high and the next he is screaming angry hate and starting a fight over the color of your sweater or the flavor of chocolate or the lyric of a song. and he pulls this bullshit victim card that is so my father i could puke. when judas went up and kissed him. i almost got sick. i guess i knew that was coming. and i try to appease him. talk him off the ledge. let him rant and tire himself out, but sometimes he never does. and that is when it gets scary. that is when i hear all those AA stories. that is when i try not to think of him dieing. that is when newspaper headlines are written -of some young kid who had beautiful eyes and a brilliant mind and a problem with liquor. stories of babies with addictions and lost souls, wandering and lonely and confused. helpless.
i am helpless.
i do not know how to save him.
i know i can't save him.
that is when i think of my little brother, two years younger, and i remember how he would cover my ass on anything.
and i cry because i love him.
and i cry because i know him.
and i think of all that he wants to be and all that he is.