oh, mercy.

i was propelled back in time, or maybe just into a place in my heart that i've been working so hard to avoid since then. avoid in every sense of the word. ignore. push away. like if i walk (run) away then i won't have to deal with it. and i haven't fully had to so in a way my strategy worked. it worked (is working) so well. not only did i make myself numb through all of it, but i escaped to develop myself into something greater. i've been making my life into a huge compensation for what he did, for how he acted, for the choices he chose. a reward for my broken family, for my drained parents, for him to see what living right is like, for myself to prove that i am not him even though our dna matches. it's been a journey on my own, and a blessed one- i've been touched in so many ways. so in a sense i think i was meant to come down this path even though i got here for some wrong reasons. now as i am forced to think about those years spent in the dark, the dark that was so overwhelming that i felt i had to create my own light, i feel the hardness in a part of my heart. i feel it so powerfully, weighing down- reminding me of all the memories that could've been if it hadn't happened. if things had played out differently, if evil hadn't invaded and taken hold of someone i loved so very much. if evil hadn't stolen the brother i looked up to during such influential years. it's too much to think about, it's too much to feel. mom says i did my own thing, i tried so desperately hard to focus on my own goals, my own actions, my own life during all of it because it was the only way i knew how to cope. is that true? is it that i resented him so much? that i was so hurt by him and how his actions messed everything up during that time? that if i pushed it away long enough then it would go away? that if i said the right things, and tried to seem like i was okay then i would be? that everything would be? like a move in the right direction would solve it all. now, i see that speaking and motioning forgiveness are far from really allowing yourself room to forgive. which is why the talk last night hit me so hard, so deeply, right in that small, hard place in my heart that i've fought to hide for the past four years... that everything i have become has shadowed over and distracted me from. who am i, really? how did i get here? what motivated me to get here? why do i want to be a doctor? why am i even nearly 2 semesters away from graduating? what have i left behind in my relentless efforts to run away and establish myself separately? i need to go back- as much as it hurts to fathom what was lost, and in spite of all this time i've spent forgetting and trying to move on. i need to go back and really mean those words i said to him that day; those monotonous three words that i slipped out because i knew they should have been said. i need to offer that brother- exactly who he was at that time- mercy for everything. i need to release myself from all the bitterness and pain i kept inside and channeled into my perfectionistic drive to achieve more than what he had shown himself to be. i need to go back and tell that brother that who he was deserved a real sister with a real love despite it all. despite the evil that gripped him and wrecked our lives. he deserved the love that a small piece of my heart refused to give him. oh, mercy. he deserves it now.