Crushed...

You never see the hard times in photographs, they are what get us from one smiling photo to the next....

RIP my baby brother....I miss you so much...

I am not even sure where to start with this blog. I have stared at this blank screen for so long that my eyes are blurry. Blurry from the screen or from the nonstop tears, dripping from my eyes like broken fragile faucets-which one is unclear. I find that the pain comes in waves sometimes gently touching my heart with a twinge of pain and then escaping just in time for a tidal wave to knock me under. Under where I find it hard to breathe and am overcome with so many emotions. My heart hurts in a way that I never knew possible and I’m just content to know it is still beating.

My brother took his own life on Sunday night or early Monday morning of this week. A part of ME died on Tuesday when I found out and I have somehow made it to today—whatever day it is today. My little brother is gone. My parents are “burying” their only son-the one that they never got to say goodbye to. My son will never know his uncle. I will never be able to hear my brother’s laughter because he is gone. A part of me is angry—crushed that we are all feeling this horrid pain. Pain, that before I would have never even known existed. What hurts me the most is that I tried for so long to protect my brother. I knew that he read this blog and I specially wrote things to help him and now I am writing this entry knowing that he will never read it again. He had told me that even if I hadn’t heard from him that he read my blog every single day. He was always amazed with how deeply I loved everything. How much passion I had for life all and how much I wished others had the same excitement about life that I did. He was amazed how in my deepest days that I fought with everything that I had just to live one more day. There was nothing I could do for him…

I am comforted in the fact that he is no longer hurting. The last thing I would have ever wanted was for him to feel any pain. I think if you asked my friends they would say the last word they would pick to describe me would be selfish…but right now I need to be selfish because I miss him and I am hurt. I am devastated. I am broken. I am torn. I will never be the same. But please understand if you think that I am selfish that I wouldn’t have wanted my brother to live when he didn’t want to. I just miss him more than I could ever describe….

"Death is not the greatest loss in life.The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."—Norman Cousins