crayne

Two weeks ago my brother tried to wrap himself and his Audi A4, the pride of his life, around a tree. Apparently one of his front wheels slipped into the shoulder en caused him to lose control of the car. He flipped over repeatedly on the horizontal axis before coming to a stop.

Luckily nothing was wrong with him apart from a few simple stitches and a huge fucking headache, but his car was totalled. Thank god for the rollbars in that thing is all I can say.

Things took a turn for the dramatic however, when he was voluntarily committed to a closed ward for people with addiction and psychological problems at the hospital right across from my apartment. It turns out he's been an alcoholic and taking anti-depressives to battle his mounting feelings of loneliness, his depression and his suicidal thoughts.

I never knew any of this. I know that as a child, he had some problems as the target of bullying, but he never let on how bad it was. And being almost 5 years older than him, we were never that close growing up.

It hurts me that I can't do more for him right now than visit him at the hospital and show that I care. I wish I'd stood up for him when he was bullied back in school.

But there's little I can do about the demons in his past. He'll have to learn to deal with them on his own. At least he was voluntarily committed, so that shows he's willing to fight...

It's times like this when I look at my life and can't help but be fucking grateful everything turned out the way it did, even if things didn't always turn out the way I'd have liked them to...