Remorse

Lately I've been feeling lots of remorse. I felt remorse about my brothers and my relationship when he was alive and I feel remorse when he's passed. Let me preface this post by saying our relationship was 100 times better in the last 3 years than it was his whole life before that. After our family went through intensive counseling and therapy together in 2009 our whole family formed a new bond, a closer bond, an unbreakable bond.

But as things tend to happen, that bond was slowly loosened as the months went by. I mean, I think we always appreciated each other and had a renewed sense of love for each other, we never again would take each other for granted. But we did lose touch. We did stop talking unless it was in person (which I only saw him about every month or two). That part kills me. We lived in the same damn city! Granted, our two homes were about as far away as you can get in the city. I live in Greenwood, he lived on the NW side. Thats about 50 minutes away. But thats still no excuse. I think what makes my remorse so great is that I KNEW how special he was to me and I CHOSE not to do anything about it, to preserve my relationship with him. I just let it stay stagnant, rather than cultivate and grow our relationship even further. In my mind, our relationship was great compared to before, so I let it be. I should've never compared, I should've continued to make it even better. Thats what makes my remorse so great.

I also feel remorse about how I interacted with him. Now I could possibly be overreacting, as people in grief tend to do, but I am constantly feeling guilty with how I interacted with him. I curse myself for being strict with him. For challenging him. For making him question my belief in him (which I never did). I knew he was capable of great things, but perhaps I pushed him too hard to accomplish those great things. I just wanted to push him, to encourage him to push himself, to make up for lost time (he started college a couple years late). I wanted to push him to continue his college education even when he wanted to quit and make it on his own. I think he thought I didn't think he could make it on his own. I think he thought I thought that he would be nothing without an education. And damn myself for not even entertaining the possibility that he could make it on his own. And damn myself for not giving him more credit to accomplish that on his own. If I had only known that he would no longer be with us, would I have changed my interactions, my expectations, my beliefs about him?

Curse it all. I can't believe how hard I was on him. And I'll never forgive myself for it. Curse myself and my educator status. Curse myself and my high standards, not only for myself, but for my students, and for anyone getting an education. Curse myself for not realizing Evan was not one of my students. He was my g*damn brother. Curse myself for not realizing this when he was alive, but realizing this and regretting this all too late.

If you were here, I would let you find your own way rather than me pushing you to find the way in which I thought was best for you.

I hope you forgive me.



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UPDATE:
Wow, I just checked my email and look what was waiting for me in my inbox. This couldn't me a more perfect email in response to what I've just written above. Creepy? Or God?