For the Readers

I always wonder if these entries, these words will ever have an effect on anyone. Sometimes the pages just feel like filler or happen-chance. But who takes the words for life and who for granted?
I for one take reading for granted. I'll read through page after page of blogs and continue my clicks and scrolls without blinking, without thinking. I only hope readers absorb the words. Like paper towels over puddles, I hope they soak everything up to the corners of their brain.

Afterall, it's far easier to take things in when it comes from strangers. I mean, you can listen to your best friend for twenty years but never actually use their advice for your advantage. Sometimes only a stranger can enlighten you to what you've been hearing for years. I can only hope I do that much for the next reader.

Night Sweats

At 3:00 in the morning, I've somehow aquired a need to work out. My sedated days of sun bathing and beach cruising just keep me asleep all day. It's like I'm buried in the sand up to my head, and I'm there just admiring the scenery. It's a dazing lethargy from the sun, and it's only natural that I force my energy onto something else. So I'll pull on some shorts and the same old white T before heading to the garage. Free weights, jump ropes, stretch bands, and a pulley tower sleep quitely until the garage lights up. I'll spend an hour lifting weights while my i-pod shuffle keeps a pace with Panic!, Fallout, and Blink tracks. Once I'm spent physically, I'll turn off my i-pod, the garage lights and head right into the darkened street.

I'll look down either end of the street. Lighted houses and white closed garages smile back in the darkness. I'll look up to the moon hanging behind a cloud, and then the silence will creep into my pounding chest. It's quite a retreat from the city of Atlanta, busy with skylines, misty hazes, and of course traffic. For once, I can see the stars out. For me it's a quick reflection of God in the midst of madness, a quiet before the storm if you will. It's a reminder that wherever we start our nights, we have no idea where they will go.

The Unsaid Things

No family is perfect. It's a universal truth that somehow allows total strangers to understand each other's lives. We have our stories: the crazy Aunt who always seems to have an open bar following her or the Uncle who collects deer and alligator heads for wall decor. But, my story is a greater shade of blue. The main character is my brother, and I question why I call him that.

Instead of partying a night away with him, I opted for volleyball. A drunken phone call came later in the night, "where are you?" I gave a few replies then that phone call ended with, "Now I know exactly how dad feels." I see neither my dad nor my brother often, and they are well within their right to be mad. Just with no car and no phone calls from them, how am I supposed to know what hell to do?

My mother's attempt at recovering this relationship has been to promote interaction in the way of speech. Still, the usual words exchanged between us are "hello," "cool," and a quick-tempered "bye." Being a "mom," she's spotted the back bedroom with baby pictures of us, and I'm here writing as the maybe once brotherly eyes stare back.

And here comes what's been unsaid for twenty years. Every memory I have of my brother is aggressive, angry, selfish, fighting, stubborn, and pained. One exception being on my sixteenth birthday when he decided it was time I partied with him. Sure enough, I drank a Limon Bicardi bottle until it ran dry and spent the twighlight hours curled about a toilet. Hardly an experience of connection and meaningful relation. Looking all the way back from childhood boards games, pieces scattered about the room from being thrown by him, I can't remember us relating. Random friends have taken his place. They've done and tried more than him in his twenty year tenure, when I've known them just for two short years. It's not that I don't care about my brother, I do (otherwise why am I writing this). But where is his effort?...

Broken relationships are a part of life and certainly more will come in the future. But the question remains, how do I mend something that's so ripped apart? Our relationship is this jigsaw puzzle that's been swallowed by a dog, gnawed and slimed, then spit back out on hardwood floors. There is not a rippled edge I can being to piece together, and finding the corner pieces is simply impossible. Just a big mess of brown with the thought of "where do I begin?"