Don’t Read This
by William Carter
Often, I worry you are going to turn up dead. It’s going to be the middle of the night or the early morning, and Dad is going to tell me through tears that you overdosed or made the wrong people mad or got high or drunk and got behind the wheel. I fear you’re going to do something stupid. I mean, with your mental illness or whatever’s going on for you, it’s not stupid, but I would be so mad at you like you were being stupid.
Today, I hate myself. I hate myself because I thought that you might be dead, and I didn’t feel sadness. I felt relief. What the hell is wrong with me?
You understand, though, right? The amount of worry you have caused me, caused all of us. Then, you started coming to my house, knocking on the door, like you were dropping off a package or selling girl scout cookies. Only thing is, you are homeless, and you are looking to sleep on my couch.
You are an addict whose level of sobriety is unknown. Sure, I can’t smell booze on your breath or weed on your clothes, but I don’t know if smoking meth leaves a smell, and it’s hard to get a good look at your nasal passages or your wrists.
It’s just so hard to know. I want to trust you when you say you’re sober, but you’ve said this before, sworn up and down, and then, sat there with handcuffs on your wrists.
Talking to you is like just speaking to make it seem like a conversation until you interrupt with what you want to talk about. I’m just here to break it up, so it’s not just a full-blown monologue. I’m a background character.
I don’t enjoy these conversations. I don’t like being around you when it’s like this. I don’t like that I know the text to get coffee will be followed up with a text to “get a few bucks”.
50 dollars for your medicine, you say. That’s it, you say.
Why do you still end that sentence with a period, rather than a question mark?
I hate that I felt relief at the thought that you were dead.
You’re my brother, and I love you, but damn, you can be so fucking hard to love sometimes.
If you were reading this, you would laugh at my use of the F word. You know it’s out of character for me, and it would take you by surprise, but there’s no other way to describe how it feels to love you and hate the consequences of loving you, hate you at times for how I worried I get, worried everyone gets, and how little that seems to matter to you.
I saw you yesterday when I went by mom and dad’s. You were laying out on the back porch. You knew they were in England, so you knew they wouldn’t mind, and we talked, and it was normal. It was good. I don’t think you’ve been able to get your Adderall. That’s why you were normal, I think. I don’t know. I think that’s what been messing you up. Your ex-girlfriend told me that you smoked meth and called it your medicine, and she thinks you’re using Adderall to get that feeling back, and I can see that.
It was a normal, nice conversation, but I can’t help but think: how long will it last this time? You got a job, you said, and in the back of my mind, I thought, “We’ll see,” and God, forgive me. I hate myself for it, but you know your track record. You know how you are. You said that this year has been the year from Job, but that’s not fair to Job. Job didn’t have a history with drugs and alcohol. Job didn’t have manic, paranoid episodes. Job didn’t swear up and down that everything was fine, even though he was homeless.
I hate that I have these thoughts that I hate, and I want to blame you for them. I guess I have relief at the thought of your death because I think it will make all of these bad thoughts go away, but really, I know it would just make the worst ones stick, and I would hate myself even more for thinking them.
Please, don’t die. I love you. I just want you to get better.
I don’t want to think of you as a burden. I want to know you as my brother.
I love you.
BIO: Will Carter is a brain injury survivor, whose memoir, Getting Better, is publshed by Running Wild Press. He is a lecturer at Kennesaw State University. He write about trauma, healing, and his faith.