How We Lost Him
High School:
I feel my phone against my arm sometime between the moon and the morning. I told him to call anytime he needed a ride. I just didn’t know I would be crawling out of bed and wandering around parties every Friday night.
I pass the bonfire and the keg, the sad concrete looking Freshman girls and the open tailgates.
“Have you seen Ryan?” I ask everyone.
His body is long and limp, heavy like a log when he’s too drunk to walk. “Lay down” I tell him. Lance holds his feet while I tilt his head up and shut the door.
I try to be quiet like a mouse when I get home, drag his feet real slow, careful to not wake anyone up.
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College:
It’s awkward, leaving the church staff Christmas party to go pick up your brother from the bar he’s been kicked out of. My feet are tired and I feel uncomfortable. My tights and heels set me apart from the jeans that everyone else wears. Leaning against a wall, belligerent, he waits.
I put his hand in mine.
“C’mon let’s go home.” I say
“I didn’t do anything” he complains.
“I know.”
He never did anything.
I drive and he talks and cries and makes little sense. Cries so many tears, could probably fill a bathtub with those tears. Is sad like never before. He hurts the kind of hurt that shows no blood- just eats you up, just forces you to spend years in counseling. Says he feels alone, maybe worthless too. I just keep saying that I love him. I love him. I love him.
“You are not worthless,” I say.
He is not worthless.
Nobody is worthless.
In the morning I bring him water and Advil and he remembers nothing.
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Summer 09:
It’s hot and humid in the house and Ryan wakes me up to tell me he just tried acid for the first time.
“McKenzie, wake up.”
“What?”
“I just ate acid.”
“You ate what?”
“Acid.”
“Why?”
“I feel like fucking John Lennon right now.”
“Go to sleep.”
I sleep on the couch, if I even sleep at all.
Mostly though, I close my eyes and hope he’s alright. Mostly I get canker sores and take care of a grown child. Do this, do that, tie your shoes Ryan.
He’s asks me for money and I never know what to do. Says fifteen dollars will get him through the next couple of hours. I check my bank account and it’s empty. I check my heart and it’s hard and sad and ripped to shreds. I guess you could say it’s empty too.
“How about we go eat instead?”
“I’m not hungry.” He says.
He’s emaciated though, looks pretty hungry. His once perfect jaw line sinks in too far now. Is some kind of half-alive human. Bones popping out here and there like a starving African who needs more than just food.
A week earlier a package came from India for him. Toxic bubble wrap. A package of pills, self-prescribed.
And now I’ve got enough pain for the both of us. He can’t feel, so numb, so blurry all the time. His head has gone mad, gone too dizzy to see anything for what it is.
I put my hand on his shoulder and pray and hope for something to change.
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Today:
(?)
