My brother's keeper.

I am not my brother's keeper, nor am I his executioner either.

In two weeks, my brother will be dead for a whole year. I have not progressed.

I thought I was over it, but as it turns out, I am neck deep in the shit he left behind.

I want to tell you about my brother.

I guess for starters, he really isn't my brother. I am an only child and always will be, and that I suppose is sad.

I first met the E in the fall of one of those 90's years. Anj had friends at this one school, and The fishman and I wanted to sell there, so we decided to go hang out at the smoking area.

There was this dork there. He was gangly, pale and had not realised he needed to start shaving. A fatherless sort. He didn't actually smoke, but the nerds had cut him loose, for though he was in the gifted classes with them, he was too dark and disturbing for them. He was lost adrift in a sea of pony tails and leather jackets. He had no idea where he belonged and so he just started going places to see if he fit in there. I had been street bound for just over 7 months when I saw him there.

At first the fish and I thought he looked like a mark, but he rejected the ffish straight up. That was when John the idiot spoke up. He told us to forget the kid and just move on. That was sort of like flagging him as cool for me, that was how much I respected John the idiot. If the idiot didn`t like him, then he was my kind of people.

Less than a month later E was living with me and we were crackin skulls, smokin bowls and breaking hearts.

It was right around the time he showed up with a giant hockey bag full of every kind of sharp object you can imagine that I knew he and I were meant to be.

We were nigh on inseperable for years. We always shared the same living space and we did everything together. We experimented with everything short of buttsecks.

It`s kind of funny looking back now, realising how messed up we were, yet how we clung to each other`s friendship for dear life.

He killed his first man at 16. I think he did it so I wouldn`t have to. Sad really. The violence was much easier for him.

I saved his life at 17.

Long story short, I was led to believe he had been killed. I was at a funeral in the us when it happened...suppoisedly.

He was told that I was killed coming back.

He took off and I took off.

That all changed just before my birthday last year. In a story that no one would believe if they saw it on tv (which by the way pretty much sums up my life) we ran in to each other. We were both visiting the dead fish.

Anyway, we had a rough go of it. The hard part was that when we saw each other, it was like old times. It was like nothing had ever changed, but alas it had. I was no longer the G I used to be....god I am white.

I was trying to find meaning and direction. A purpose with which to live life by. Some semblance of normalcy after what had been a decidedly unnormal life.

We both got in to each other`s heads. He trying to convince me I was and always would be me, and me to convince him he could change and roll with me.

The guilt caught up to him. You see, he had killed a lot of people, and he couldn`t face what I offered. He couldn`t ignore the past and let it wash away as easily as I had apparently done. People tried to convince me I could be saved and reborn, and he knew in his heart it wasn`t true.

I told him no more. I told him we was through, and well, he took it like a champ. After the gun waving and the hired goons, he said ok.

Then he called me and said it wasn`t going to happen, he couldn`t deal.

Two weeks later he was dead.

I am not sure why I am writing this. Maybe it is just to say that the kids arren`t alright. That the world isn`t all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows.

There are deep dark places in this world full of deep dark people. But that doesn`t have to be the world we live in.

I feel like I have been in this soul rending struggle for over a year now. This struggle of self exploration and definition. Like any of it matters.

No definition can capture the gestalt of a person. No single volume, or trilogy can really capture the essence of the human experience as manifested in any individual.

Yet we all struggle to define ourselves. Some of us do it narrowly. We choose a single or a few small definitions, and some go all Meredith brooks on themselves and classify themselves diametrically opposed to themselves.

For me the struggle is over. I am finally at peace with who and what I am. I am no longer bothered by the me of yesteryear, the me of today or the me of tomorrow.

I am no longer attempting to narrowly define myself or my service to this world.

I am born free, born in blood, reborn, and unborn.

I guess what I am trying to say is that the world is enough. We may or may not have some kind of hereafter. What I am sure of is that we have a here. We have this lifetime. We have now, and maybe tomorrow.

We can`t live for anything else, and we can`t waste one more day.

We can`t wallow in our own shit, and we can`t let each other fall victim to the shit.

We need to rise up and change the world...no wait that is a different blog entry.

We just need to take the wheel and steer. We need to stop just pretending the world might be good and make it so. We need to live each day that we have to its fullest, with no regrets, no guilt or undone crap trailing behind us, doing the albatross thing.

When we go to bed, we need to dream big, and when we wake up we need to move. We need to do stuff to make it happen, and we need to make sure we never leave unfinished business.

E and I had unfinished business, but there`s no time for that now.

What are you leaving undone?

What are you forgetting, pretending to forget, or allowing to hold you back from achieving who you can be?

Do not let anyone tell you how to behave and how to think, always judge and question the value of your own behaviours and thoughts, and those that other try and hoist on you.

Always live for life, not for death.

Just let it all hang out.