Dear Brother

 

Dear brother,

I’m writing this letter in a hurry, fearing that I might hesitate. Cutting you off was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. Cutting off a friend may be hard, but friends –although, we hate to admit it– are inconsequential. You can seek that feeling of familiarity and companionship in other people, yet a brother is a companion imposed on you by the universe. Maybe it was the shared experience of a dysfunctional household that made our bond unique, or the way a brother subliminally has to accept you as a sibling even though your personalities are so different that in an alternative universe, had he not been born from the same womb, he will not as much as glance at you. A bond– so strong that even distance and time can't snip the strings pulling you together. 

I can’t remember the first time I saw you, but I remember all the times you tended to my wounds inflicted by the womb that brought us together, ignoring your own even though every time you moved, a hiss or a whimper broke from your lips. I was born wary of life, scared and foreign in this world, but you taught me how to explore the unknown. Your intrepidity always enthralled me. I never learned how to be a younger brother.Maybe if I did, things wouldn’t have ended this way. 

When you first open your eyes, you instinctively follow your elder brother. Everything he does is fascinating. The moment he takes a breath, you’re eager to take the next one. Always following him, hoping that one day your footsteps will fall at the same pace, waiting for him to look behind, and see how much you look up to him. You model yourself after him, imitate his expressions and reactions, and later adopt his opinions and musical taste. And although he finds it annoying, he allows you to exist in his space until you find your own. Those were the happy years. Had I only stayed in your space, it was easier to breathe when I did not have to confront myself.

There is something rotten deep inside me. I don’t know how to get rid of it. It squanders my life and drowns me in cycles of self-hatred. An ouroboros that causes our downfall. Every day I spent in this life felt like a divine retribution. Maybe life is treating me this way because it knows how much I despise it. The only moments of reprieve I had were when drugs rushed through my veins. It felt like divine grace bestowed on me. I subsequently realized the consequences of this short-lived bliss: when you started to avoid my eyes, or when your fingers traced my scars, and the worst of it all was when you looked at me, and your eyebrows knit together, lips pursed as if you couldn't recognize me, squinting your eyes trying to find blurry fragments of the person I used to be. The rot I so hardly tried to conceal, emerged and coated my skin, painting me into a stranger, and there was someone behind it screaming “It’s me ,brother”,  “It’s me”,  “Why are you scared?”. Yet my words can't reach you as my “I love you” used to. “ I will go to rehab” I'd say, and your face would immediately shut off, only your eyes stay true to you, translating pity and disappointment. You became familiar with the pattern. All I bring you is pain and misery, and I shall rid you of it.

In another universe, I'm not as weak and messed up as I am now.

In another universe, I don't deceive you with false promises.

In another universe, I don't relapse.

In another universe, I live.

Hiba Abbassi