Gay Life: A Goodbye, a Family Torn

Perhaps my family members will never know what happened to him, but I do. I didn’t care that he was gay. I don’t care that he had this secret. The only thing that mattered was that I loved him. He was the person in my life that I looked up to. He is partly responsible for me being who I am today. I look back, and I am so lucky to have had him in my life for those years that I did. My family is extremely close. I do have wonderful parents. I like my life today, because I came to terms over the last few years with my past. I freed myself up from years of self-blame. I let go of feeling sorry for myself for being “left behind” by him. Family should never make a member feel as though they don’t have any choice, but to run. I wish that I understood as a child how to stop him. I wish I could have expressed my feelings about how who we love should not matter. One of the many things I seemed to learned at an early age, was to respect that everyone can be different in whatever way they want as long as there’s no harm involved. I didn’t know that being gay was so called bad. I didn’t know that his living with a male was considered wrong. I thought his male friend was great. I never judged either of them and I looked up to them both. They were interesting, artsy, creative, funny and had a world out there they could bring back to me each day when I saw them at night. I’ve missed those stories. I was the luckiest kid to have two big brothers. Life was wonderful. I was happy. What was the problem? He was not happy, neither of them were. He was having a hard time with our family. Why? He wasn’t getting the acceptance he needed from my parents. He got it from me, but he wanted it from them. He knew I loved him, I hope he does. What did I know than as a kid(shoulder shrug)? I loved him, enjoyed him and that was enough for me. Beyond that, nothing else mattered to me. I do recall the jokes that my parents made though, but I didn’t understand it back then. All he wanted was to be an individual. Why did he run off? Because, he couldn’t be himself. I wish I understood what was going on between him and my parents, but I didn’t know because I didn’t know that being gay was wrong(rolling my eyes in sarcasm). So, he took off and left me behind wondering about him all these years. I would have spoke up if I knew what was going on between him and my parents. I wish they would have seen that they were pushing him too far. I wish they would have stopped, because it cost us to lose him many years ago.