As I sit and think about having to ask my older brother about what it was like growing up in our house...I can't help but begin to see the myriad of ways that we didn't relate. We didn't share anything in common. We didn't play together by choice (it was only because we both had to utilize the same bag of Legos). He was not a confidant, he was not a safe person for me, he was not available, not protective...he was not my brother in all the ways I wish someone would have been.
Some of this has come up just because of this process of recovery I am going thru, but the more poignant observations were highlighted by a recent look at a buddies Facebook photos. Photos of he and his brother doing "brother hikes", camping trips, shirtless ski runs (family tradition). Photos of them arm in arm being brothers...the love, the bond is obvious. I have none of that. And that is a very sad realization.
So I cannot change the past. How do I then move past this? Can I forgive him for being a crappy brother? Is it even right to expect all that of him? Wasn't he just trying to survive the very same 'family of origin' that has already churned out two full-blown addicts?
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