Family Matters

I used to dread the holidays because they always reminded me of the family members we lost and the lack of family I have locally, with two brothers on each coast, my uncle up north and my good friends scattered across the country.

This year though, looked like it was going to be different. My mom is here, my oldest and youngest brother are here and my other younger brother was home (Virginia) to celebrate his daughter's first Christmas instead of being out on the ship in the middle of the Atlantic.

However the youngest brother isn't even here a month (he came down for the Thanksgiving holidays and was going to stay a while with us before going back to Virginia) before he finds his old group of friends. The same ones who were a bad influence on him and got him caught up in stupid petty crimes before winding up in jail. Now he's in some kind of trouble AGAIN.

We got the call from the police two days ago. He hasn't been home since. He called maybe once to let us know where he was at.

*Sigh*

My goddamn family.

I don't know what to do. I gave up on the kid once. But then he turned himself in, did his time, got out, took his GED test, passed with flying colors and then moved to VA with his older brother and got himself clean, a job, and even started looking into colleges. I honestly don't know what made him turn back to his old ways. As far as I could tell he was doing okay here the past couple weeks. Everyone was on good terms and looking forward to the holidays. He and I were talking about what we wanted to get the parental figure for Christmas and we even went shopping for our niece together about a week ago.

He and I also took pictures together, the kind where you sit in that cheesy little booth and make stupid faces and a strip of four pictures spits out the slot after two minutes. I gave him the top two photos and I stuck the bottom two in my wallet because I have no recent photos of him and I together. On the last one we were imitating the three stooges. We had fun.

I'd give anything to talk to him. If I just . . .

If I just knew where he was at, figuratively speaking.

God, I need to escape for a while.



Random thought of the day: Ugh, hurry up 2005, hurry up and be done with.