My parents are still together and my brother Owen still lives at home. I’m huddled on my bed, sheltering myself under blankets with my cat. I hear my parents yelling at each other upstairs, my brother joining the chaos. I’ve suffered through many nights listening to the yelling upstairs, the frustration and the anger. This, though, is different. My brother isn’t always involved, and it seems worse this time.
The back door opens and Owen storms out. It felt like hours I sat there, wondering when he would come back and what would happen when he did. Finally he returns. I hear him punch the wall separating our rooms, and I flinch. Hours later he walks into my room, dried tear tracks on his cheeks.
“Do you want to go on a walk with me?” he asks, an unusual request. We’ve never had a close relationship, and it’s midnight; I just want to go to sleep. I tell him no, to my everlasting regret, and life moves on: I wake up the next morning and go to school, as if nothing happened. But I still think about this night, not …show more content…
He struggled for a long time with depression, anxiety, and addiction, and we grew closer as he was recovering from these things. When I was going into tenth grade and Owen into twelfth, we did All City Band together and he drove us to practices. We’d take the long way home to go down the street with the funny name, driving around with Owen’s metal music blaring and the windows down. I remember that summer fondly because those drives brought us closer together.
That same year he moved out, getting a job and moving in with friends six miles away. He tells me that he takes time every day to ask himself if what he’s doing is making him happy, and that kind of self-reflection has shaped the way I make decisions and think about my life. I don’t yet know what I want to study or what career I want to pursue, but I know I want to continue doing what makes me happy and explore new things that I might
The back door opens and Owen storms out. It felt like hours I sat there, wondering when he would come back and what would happen when he did. Finally he returns. I hear him punch the wall separating our rooms, and I flinch. Hours later he walks into my room, dried tear tracks on his cheeks.
“Do you want to go on a walk with me?” he asks, an unusual request. We’ve never had a close relationship, and it’s midnight; I just want to go to sleep. I tell him no, to my everlasting regret, and life moves on: I wake up the next morning and go to school, as if nothing happened. But I still think about this night, not …show more content…
He struggled for a long time with depression, anxiety, and addiction, and we grew closer as he was recovering from these things. When I was going into tenth grade and Owen into twelfth, we did All City Band together and he drove us to practices. We’d take the long way home to go down the street with the funny name, driving around with Owen’s metal music blaring and the windows down. I remember that summer fondly because those drives brought us closer together.
That same year he moved out, getting a job and moving in with friends six miles away. He tells me that he takes time every day to ask himself if what he’s doing is making him happy, and that kind of self-reflection has shaped the way I make decisions and think about my life. I don’t yet know what I want to study or what career I want to pursue, but I know I want to continue doing what makes me happy and explore new things that I might