The leaves have fallen.
Bell ringers sign up for their two-hour shifts.
I transition from my regular generalized anxiety to my fancier, more prevalent, Holiday anxiety mixed with a dash of seasonal affective disorder.
It’s time to celebrate the holiday season.
There is an ora of excitement that fills my house. I always decorate for Christmas way too early, but my family of boys has (begrudgingly) learned to let me live my life. They are in full support of my need to feel warm and fuzzy every time I walk into our living room, despite sneakily making fun of me behind my back. (Like I don’t know, guys).
It’s not nostalgia that gets me. What conjures the overwhelming sense of warmth are the new traditions my family has created. Traditions in general still feel brand new to me, and dammit. I am in love with all of it. The smells, the twinkling lights, movies new and old, funny stories from past holidays, the church festivities, cookie baking, and the rest. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.
But for the past two years, the changing seasons have come with a gut-wrenching reality:
My brother is now a chronically homeless person.
This will be his second holiday season outside.
There are a number of obvious reasons why this is hard for me.
First, I am in recovery myself.
It’s not lost on me that I could be him. His life could be mine. There aren’t any logical reasons that I can think of that help me to reconcile or make sense of why my journey, as similar as it is to his, has gone in a different direction. I can’t put into words how thankful I am that I’m alive, AND to have found peace within myself outside of a jail cell and isolation.
Next, I am a recovering Miss, ‘I can definitely fix yo life’.
I will not go back to her. I am not that girl. I am not under the impression anymore that I am that important, or that powerful. I used to believe that my magical control could fix any man on planet Earth, and I have since been schooled by life and a handful of narcissists. I am no longer under the impression that money, control, the right set of circumstances, or rules and regulations can fix a broken spirit. My brother’s struggle has tested my ability to stick to healthy lines drawn in the sand. Trust me.
I really want to save him.
Like every single day.
Lastly, there is the compartmentalization factor.
I have vowed to live an integrated life. Because I have worked through the bulk of the shame that I carried around for so long, I don’t see a need to separate my life into two realms. For example, Me vs. Them, Old me vs. New me, My family vs. my family of origin; I have one family. One life. One journey. I do see the difference between my life before Jesus and after Jesus rocked my world, and He can rightly have ALL of the glory for the transformation I have crawled through, but my life can’t be segregated into pieces that I can conveniently draw from when needed.
Because I am a sober person, that kind of thinking creates a dangerous kind of territory for me.
I get too tempted to push things away, hide them, and never revisit them. Ever.
My life is a, ‘feel it all and face it all’ or face nothing, kind of thing now.
My brother is a someone, who I can’t push away from my mind. Not a something, that I can ignore until it’s more convenient and easier to swallow. So I struggle. I make progress. I work through the emotions that come with love. How do I live my day-to-day life, without allowing guilt to eat me alive? This is not exactly a welcomed topic among my friends and family, mostly because I don’t need anyone to tell me that he made his bed and he should lie in it, but also because generally, homelessness is just not a socially acceptable conversation topic.
So I write and I pray.
I write because it hurts.
I pray because I know that I can get through pain without escape.
I write because my heart is aching and my stomach is in knots, constantly churning.
I pray because my deliverer calms my weary spirit.
I write because drug-addiction and homelessness are often misunderstood.
I pray because God knows and understands from a divine perspective.
I write because I do not know one other person who understands what it feels like to love someone and not be able to DO anything, or what it feels like to look into empty, exhausted eyes of someone you love as they tell you that they are lonely. That it is pretty hard some days to not have family around, that he feels like a piece of shit, that he doesn’t know if he is going to make it, or why he still drinks other than to keep warm at night.
I pray because God knows my brother’s struggle. He knows his heart is troubled.
I spent Thanksgiving day as we normally do, with my in-laws. Making Memories. In between browsing newspaper ads, unnecessary calorie consumption, and playing catch with a football outside in the beautiful weather, my mind continually wandered all day long. Where was my brother today? How was he spending the holiday? I knew that he was outside and most likely all alone. When I got home I packed him a plate of leftovers and headed downtown. I knew he was down there somewhere and had spent his nights in a specific area frequented by the homeless community in our city. I parked my car and began my search. I made eye contact with dozens of homeless men and women that I studied, trying to make sure I didn’t overlook my brother beneath a coat and hat. As I passed each block I checked behind dumpsters, inside of corridors that blocked wind, beneath overpasses, and inside of public buildings. I met several kind people who were clearly a part of my brother’s community. We exchanged pleasantries and “Happy Thanksgiving’s” and I tried not to hug them because that would have probably made them feel uncomfortable. I sat on a freezing cold metal bench waiting and carefully watching the public transit car make its way around and around the city blocks, hoping that he might be the next one to step off on the next stop. I walked through the most popular sleeping park where the homeless are usually kicked out of, feeling overwhelmed with guilt that in my head I was already whining that my fingers and toes were frozen.
I never found him on Thanksgiving night, but what I did find reminded me of something my sixteen-year-old son said to me a few weeks ago. As I prepared for an article I was working on, I asked him this question:
“Knowing what you know about me and my family if you could tell people one thing about addiction, what would you tell them?”
Without hesitation he answered:
“They’re not just bad people”
And that’s it.
As simple as it sounds, that is the profound connection between why addiction is the life sucking, cruel game that it is, that whole families get to play.
They aren’t bad people.
The people I met and spoke to on Thanksgiving night were not bad people.
My brother isn’t a bad person.
Maybe this would all be so much easier if they were.
If he was.
If I didn’t know that he was funny, smart, and kind-hearted, or that there was a time when he was a hard-working man with a slew of talents, goals, and dreams.
Most of that is gone now and his time is spent focusing energy on backpacks that continually rotate on a belt of theft or accidental loss, and hustling from sun up to sun down to stay alive.
So for now, here’s what I know.
My new approach is a stark contrast from my earlier game plan of limited contact and tough love.
It worked until it didn’t.
While keeping in mind that my primary purpose here on Earth is not to spend my life committed to being the author of my demise; overextending my energy and resources at the expense of my mental well-being, and labeling it ‘love’, and being mindful that I am a recovering co-dependent, people pleasing, approval seeking, Al-anon going, big sister, and that in years passed I have fought for him in all the wrong ways that a loved one can when someone is fighting a demon as fierce and relentless as alcohol addiction and shame, I am going to do do a better job doing my duty. Export car sale, car repurchase without technical control anywhere in France here
I am still living my life one day at a time, reminding myself that God is ultimately in control.
I fill my mind with a new Just for Today with each sunrise.
I fix my eyes on Jesus and focus my eyes on one thing: Love. Showing it. Seeking it. Staying close to it.
I can’t give him money, but I will not let him forget that he is a human being.
I can’t always offer a ride from one place to another, but I won’t let him hang up the phone without him hearing the words that I miss and love him.
I won’t help for the sake of being dubbed anyone’s savior, but I will do everything I can to remind him that he matters and that he is loved beyond measure no matter what happens, where he is sleeping, or how he spends his days.