How Did We Get Here?
Amanda Bastos
If you pictured a perfect childhood, that is exactly how mine was. A big house, lots of toys, amazing parents and an older brother that I could call my best friend. There was never a lack of hugs, bedtime stories, or goodnight kisses. I am very fortunate for the upbringing I had, but eventually things changed.
Recently I discovered that witnessing someone you love self destruct is one of the most painful things you could go through. Unfortunately, I have had the awful experience of seeing my older brother struggle with the horrible disease of addiction. This demon of an illness managed to rip my beautiful family apart in a short amount of time.
As teenagers, my brother and I did a lot together. Three and a half years apart was not too big of an age gap. I loved to hang out with him and his friends and they loved when I was there. But eventually I wasn't welcome anymore and I couldn't understand why. We no longer did our daily things together like practicing slap shots together outside, stickhandling in the basement with golf balls and laughing at ridiculous TV shows. My best friend didn't want anything to do with me anymore and I was devastated. All day, everyday we walked by each other without even looking up to make eye contact. That is how distant we became.
It took me a while to understand what had happened between me and Derek for him to act this way. . We had always had the best time when we were together. He seemed sad. I always tried to be there for him but my help was not wanted.
I was soon informed by my mom that she thought that Derek had a drinking problem. That wasn't possible because you cannot have a drinking problem when you are not even twenty one. I was wrong. Derek had a binge drinking problem that was extremely bad and when he drank he also confined in drugs, hard drugs. And quickly the drugs were being used more than just when he drank. He became highly dependant on Hash oil, a refined and very potent form of THC, and consuming it soon became his main priority.
Finding out this information about my brother broke my heart. My role model was no longer doing the right things. As time went on we began to fight. He seemed to be mad at everything I did. If i asked him too many questions about his day, if I took the last water out of the fridge, If my music was on too loud, he seemed to hate everything I did. It took me a while to understand that he couldn't like the things other people were doing until he could like the things he was doing himself. He knew he was struggling and in a bad place, even though he would never admit it. I remember sitting on the couch with my dad and having the conversation on how we got here. How did we get here? How did my role model and best friend fall so far into a bad habit that I did not even know who he was anymore. We had the same upbringing, so why did this happen to just him and not me? Our parents gave us everything and more to make sure we were happy and taken care of.