After publishing a rather emotional and vitally important
post about my brother and making amends for my mistakes, I decided that this
morning would be a good time to take action. I had previously sent him an email
to an address we communicated through many years back. That was about a month
ago, and I never heard back. It would be easy to leave it at that and say I tried, but then the pain is still
inside, capable of coming out in ways detriment to recovery. I needed to take
further action today.
The easiest way to find people these days seems to be
Facebook, so that’s where I started and stopped. It wasn’t a simple task to
find him, as he does not have a picture of him as his cover photo. But I did
some digging in profiles under his name, and after some time, I saw his face. I
saw his face, that of his wife’s, and even two beautiful children; a niece and
nephew I have never met. I just sat and stared for a bit. My eyes began to
sting as the years of loss began to form in small droplets at the corner of my
eyes. I knew this was real.
I looked for the usual icon which would allow me to send him
a friend request, but was content to see that option not available on his
profile. The only option was to send a message via messenger, so I did. Here is
what I wrote: So, obviously I didn’t
leave things on very good terms. I gave (sic (stupid auto-correct)) done a lot
of stupid things in my life, the last decade being riddled with them. I’ve been
back on track for a couple years now and would like the chance to set things
straight. At the very least I would like to pay you back. Let me know what you
think.
Simple, but it hopefully got the message to him that I
wanted to fix what has been broken. At that point I grabbed my computer and
headed to Nina’s Coffee Café to write this post. About half way here, I felt a
vibration in my pocket that made my whole body tense up, and a lump formed in
my throat. This could be it. I was
nervous because I might see something like, “Fuck off.” But really I was
excited to hear from him. Doing the dangerous thing, I reached for my phone
while operating a motor vehicle—a stick, no less—and pushed the button to
activate the screen. What I saw surprised me, and really set the tone for my
future. It was a message from Miranda@jiup.onmicrosoft with an important e-mail
regarding options for my current credit card debt. Awesome! I don’t have any
credit card debt so this process should be super easy. Needless to say, it was
a big let-down.
I’ve been anxiously awaiting a reply as I sit here writing
these words, but I need to let that part go as it is out of my hands. I will
give it a few days and then try again if I don’t hear anything. I am not giving
up on this one. It feels good to have
actually gotten the ball rolling finally, instead of just kicking it around in
my head for all these years. I don’t know what the final result will be, but I
can say with confidence that it will be better than the way things were
yesterday, and for years before that. As soon as I have an update or have made
any progress, I will write about it, of course. Until then, I have many more
amends to make, and I will be focusing on that, so don’t be surprised if you get a call from me soon, asking to
go out for lunch.
