While the above image is from an anime. I wish my brother and I were still that young and that I could change everything that he’s gone through. That I could save him.
I live in a family of five. My father,mother,little brother, and little sister. We’ve lived in a town known as a “ghetto” for 13 years. My brother since he was in pre-k loved art. He would color and draw his name in big colorful letters. As he grew he started loving and appreciating the urban art that surrounded him. By the time he was in fourth grade he was fluent in different fonts and could go through 80 page notebooks in one day by filling them with different letters with different names. Art became his passion, he would do origami with me and paint pictures with me. While I was drawing my dark anime characters, he would draw odd monsters that devoured letters, or letters within a city setting. Everything revolved around letters. The following years he became even further entranced with the urban art and wanted to do some art for himself. I bought him a canvas and a mini spray can. He created a piece of art. Then came his “blackbook”. “Blackbooks” as I understood from carrying one around was to pass it from one artist to another til it came back to you. When this happened the book was filled with art pieces from various underground and rising artist.
I lugged around my brother’s “blackbook” and my highschool which had various underground artist that knew upcoming artist that my brother had seen throughout town. Well not to brag but that book came back more than half full with different “tags” about two weeks later. I took it home to a very delighted pre-teen. So he always kept it, looked, and drew inspiration from the art he found inside.
But I never knew or expected this to impact me or that these events would carry a bigger consequence.
My brother was always a goofball in and outside of class. But he was ALWAYS respectful. He was never rude to any teacher or authority figure,but he never paid much attention to his teachers and never did school work he just drew. He drew around the paper everywhere that had blank space.
Eventually he found a girlfriend and gave me a beautiful niece. But he also got sent away to a reformatory school while his baby was incubated. I was sad for four months, my boyfriend was the best support I had. My family reality became blurred and distorted. When he got out we were all happy…yet not too much. My brother had changed. In the first days he was quiet,reserved, respectful. Gradually, he began to change. Then it all hit.
Reality brought all of us down. Then it began my brother got louder and more volatile. He began doing things like a crazy kid, he began lashing out and became unpredictable. As months went by of me urging my parents to get him help. He became worse then it happened he began to get violent. Slowly these became more frequent. Now we can’t hold him back. This little boy became something uncontrollable. Everytime he is approached he is approached with fear if not complete terror. But it’s strange he’s sweet, nice, and not violent sometimes. But now I have to go talk to him about an issue and I’m wishing that I really didn’t have to.
Enigma Of Me 