Even If Saving You Sends Me To Heaven

The day my brother left is probaly the worst memory I have to this date. I was fourteen when it happened. I could still remember it like it was yesterday, even though it had been more than two years. I could still feel the same things I did then. Feelings I never wanted to feel at all. Betrayal, hatred and fear were the three emotions leading all the others in tormenting my mind and my heart.

The way my brother, Gerard, was trashing his room while packing anything he felt like bringing still makes me want to cry. I did cry back then. I was sitting on his bed, tears streming down my face while watching him walk back and forth; grabbing various items and stuffing them into his dark messenger bag. The bag wasn't black, more like a really dark grey, but I still couldn't call it grey, because it was supposed to be black. I remember him buying it, and I remember loving it, wanting it so badly when he did, but I never got it. He told me that if I still wanted it when he got a new one, I could have it. At that time I was so sure that the bag would be mine some day, but the bag was till with him, gripped tightly in his left hand while he was shoving notebooks, underwear, pictures and other things he wanted roughly into it.

Like I said, the day my brother left is my worst memory. Some people would wonder why he left? I mean, a 16 year old kid with no job and no legit education couldn't just leave? Even though mot people don't know till this date why he left, it's a quite obvious reason for me. He wanted to escape the man I wanted to call my father. The unfortunate thing was, though, that he was nothing like a father. For many years, Gerard and I had witnessed my mother's screaming, her bruises and her tears. We would just sit on his bed in the basement and cry silently together, hoping and praying to a god we didn't know to stop the brutal ways of George.

When I was 12 years old, me and Gerard were sitting on his bed as usual. Our mother's screams for mercy were worse. Her cries for him to stop were louder. My brother had left me in his basement room, suddenly running up the stairs to stop George. Let's just put it this way; it didn't get better. George found my brother's new-found courage quite amuzing, but he knew it had to stop. From that day, the bruises weren't littering only my mother, but my brother as well. He was always the brave, strong one of the two of us. He would try to smile, telling me he was fine - even when the dark circle around his eye, and his busted lip said otherwise. I admired his courage to try to stop my father, but my little, selfish 12-year old brain told me to never do the same. It told me that I didn't want to recieve beatings and it told me that my throat didn't want to get sore from all the screaming.

The day Gerard left, he gave me two things - a promise and an escape. "I promise you, Mikey, I will come back for you. I will rescue you". The word still ring clearly in my brain. After giving me that promise, he handed me a sealed envelope with a scribbled sentense on the front. I didn't read it when he first gave it to me, to busy looking at him as he stepped up on the bed, opened the basement window and threw his bag out. He then turned to look at me, gave me a small smile, before jumping up at hauling himself out of the house. As soon as the window was closed, and his feet had disappeared from my sight, I read the words on the envelope. The words of comfort, my last comfort.

My name is Mikey, I'm 16, and my life has one single word as a definition: hell.

Notes