Not so Merry:

When I was in the 8th grade, a teacher made a comment to me about how much like my brother I was. I stared him down because I had nothing to say. That was one of the only times a teacher had to call home about me. My Mom asked me what happened and explained that the teacher had called home saying that I stared him down with an "evil look" on my face. My Mom wasn't happy with me but then I explained what he said to me. She didn't get it, no one ever really does. Needless to say, I got in trouble and was forced to apologize. I still think about that day, a lot. That was the first time I was ever offended when being compared to my brother. Something that i previously would of taken as a great honor. My brother, who I once worshiped and looked up to, the same person that I had once annoyed and tried with all my might to embarrass in front of his girlfriends. The brother that I wanted so badly to impress that I in-lined skated and was able to drop into 15 foot bowls at the age of 12, because he taught me. The brother who taught me how to fake sick from school so we could stay home on the same day. The brother who told me his manhunt spots when he felt he was too old to play, leaving me the best hider on the block. The brother who gave me the tough love I needed when I let my emotions get the best of me. The only person who ever promised me that I was perfectly ok being the person I was, and not to be afraid of what anyone thought about me. The best big brother a little girl could ask for and he was mine, until the drugs took him.
It started slow, it was a slow cross between what I thought was him growing up and what my Mom knew was him losing himself. The culture that made him so great was destroying him. The same guys that created the great skateboarder that he was known as were the same ones who handed him the very thing that destroyed him. A catch 22, as he once tried to explain to me, drugs took the fear out of doing the tricks he was afraid to try. The very thing that glorified him created the problem that took his glory away. At that point I still had room for understanding, that ship has long sailed and crashed onto an abandoned  island somewhere deep in my mind.
 I guess where I'm going with this, or intended on going, is that it's almost Christmas and he wont be home, again. Which sucks for a million reasons. My little sisters are really not so little anymore. The 5 year old truly doesnt know him and that really really breaks my heart. I mean, she loves him because she feels the love that we have for him through us. The 9 year old does know him. I don't know if its a good thing or a bad thing that she got to experience a few years of his charm, maybe she would be better off not really knowing him, because then she wouldn't really miss him. But for the few short years that he was still human enough, he loved her with all his heart. He would push her around on his skateboard and show her off to all his friends, the proud big brother that I once knew, that's the big brother that she got to experience.
My Mom is so broken that I don't even know what to say to her anymore. Just on Thanksgiving alone, her eyes were so glossed over and it was so obvious that she was holding back a years worth of  tears. But she is used to this, she knows to be strong in front of everyone. But behind closed doors she is begging for her family to be complete. Endlessly searching for the answers to "what did I do wrong" but the answer is obvious. Nothing, she never did a thing wrong, it is not my mother's fault. She did everything and more that a single mother could do. She never once let us feel like we were missing something, she was the coolest mom a kid could have, the best mom. But when then she got remarried and she became the best mom in the world to her two new children and tried to be the best wife in the world all while she holds all the pain in the world in over my brother's life not really being his own. Somewhere in that mix I fall, she thinks of me as independent, someone who doesn't need their mom anymore, and that is my fault. But that doesn't mean I don't want my mom to care about me the way she does for everyone else. It doesn't mean I don't want my mom, because I do, desperately.
So this has all gotten really personal and I hope no one is reading but if you are, well, this actually is quite possibly the only meaningful thing I've ever posted on here; so, be nice.

Merry Christmas.