How To Let Go

(this is a random title...)

Chapter 0: How It Happened

            It’s been three years since I last spoke with my brother; two years since I last saw his family; a year since I decided to let him go.

            That night, after he said goodbye to me at the airport, I didn’t know what he had been going through.

            I knew of the divorce that had been filed by Carrie. I knew that his daughter—Eliza—was upset with both of her parents. She was the exact image of me when I learned that my parents were going their separate ways.

            What I didn’t know, though, was that he didn’t want me to see it all. He didn’t want me to be burdened, because he was the loving brother that I have had ever since the day I was conceived.

            Jimmy was seven years my senior. He was an average American boy, with his black hair and his brown eyes and his love for football and baseball. He wasn’t tall; wasn’t short. He was the ideal image.

            And, I loved him since the day I opened my eyes. He was the closest thing I had when I had nothing; the greatest thing I had when I had everything.

            Everyday, he showered me with his brotherly love. I don’t know what compelled him to do so; all of my friends that time said their brothers were the most horrible creatures in the world.

            My mother—Elizabeth—said that when Jimmy found out that I was going to be born, he didn’t stop talking about me. Everyday, he came to wrap his scrawny arms around my mother’s expanding womb. She told me that he would whisper, “I love you, little sister” everyday as he kissed her womb.

            He was there when my mother felt my first kicks. He was there when my mother was giving birth to me.

            It wasn’t just my mother who noticed this surpassing love in my brother; my other relatives and family friends saw it as well.

            My father said that Jimmy saved up his money to buy the toys and some of the diapers that would soon be mine. He helped my grandmother choose my clothes and he helped my aunt choose my Sunday clothes.

            My parents told me that they thought that no one could be happier than Jimmy on the day that I was born.

            Half the time while I was learning, Jimmy devoted much of his time in teaching me the things I needed to use: writing, reading, walking, and talking.

            Everyone convinced themselves that no one was closer to each other than me and Jimmy.

            When I was seven, my mother and father suddenly decided to split. Jimmy was there to comfort himself; to make himself stronger for me. I never saw him shed a tear when he was with me.

            He held me and let me cry until I was fast asleep.

            We moved with our dad—James—into a better place at least a hundred miles away from my mother.

            Though Jimmy continued his high school life, he never stopped playing with me. When he went to college, he came home almost every day to see how I was doing.

            Somewhere along the line, I caught him writing in this big journal that my grandmother had given him many years ago. When I asked him about it, he smiled and offered a more interesting game of basketball.

            It isn’t until now that I regret not asking him why he wrote in it.

            Life quickened. He married, I finished college. We lived hundred of miles away, he living in North Carolina, and I living in California.

            But, we frequently saw each other. And, in frequently seeing each other, I began to rebel against him.

            I was going through a phase in life that I questioned my being. I hadn’t thought about this when I was a teenager with my raging hormones. It was now--as an adult--that I questioned.

            My boyfriend dumped me after a relationship that had lasted nearly ten years. My mother was getting remarried to the father of my ex. I knew I was going to get laid off by my boss. My dog died.

            Jimmy didn’t comfort me. He was tired, as well, he admitted. His adolescent daughter was going through the same phase, his wife was arguing with him more frequently, and the worst part was that he didn’t have the patience he had when he was a teenager.

            We bickered. We spat. We hated. Or, at least, I hated. I hated that he was going to leave and go back to his family. I hated that he wasn’t going to think about me anymore. I hated that I wasn’t his number one.

            I was selfish.