Earlier this year, I ran into someone who was a contributor to the death of my brother. I was so upset by this first experience of seeing this person that I couldn’t sleep that night and I was shaking as I was leaving the store. We live in a small town so it was bound to happen. I just didn’t know how I would feel when it did happen.
Guess what? It happened again. This time I had a little different perspective. I’m not as spiritual of a person as I would like to be. I do believe that God is putting this person in my path for a reason. I just don’t know why yet but maybe it is to affect JM and not to affect me. Though, the death of my brother affects me every single day of my life especially when I’m alone with my thoughts. “They” say it gets better but it doesn’t get better you just don’t dwell on it every single second of the day like you did in the beginning. At some point, you are able to push it towards the back of your mind but the pain is still there waiting to be exposed at slightest thought of you. For example how the mind wanders. We moved and I thought of all the people who would stop in now that we are closer to town. This made me think of the days when my brother used to stop in every night after work at our first house in town. This made me sad to think that he didn’t do that when we moved to the country. Then I thought, maybe if we had lived in town and he had us to come visit he wouldn’t have resorted to drugs. Then I feel guilty and sad. Then I cry as I try to push something else into my brain so the tears will stop.
This time it was at our local festival called the Pork Festival. Mind you, I’m a vegetarian and the thought of anything pig disgusts me. However, it is a yearly tradition. One of which, I have only missed one year of ever attending the Pork Festival. It is a local gathering of sorts when you run into people you may have forgotten even existed. Anyway, onto to the story.
My youngest daughter and I were leaving the Pork Festival and I saw JM in front of me. He was walking with a girl I went to school with, which was a surprise to me. I am “Facebook” friends with this person and didn’t realize she was so close to this person who was a contributor to something that has hurt my family so much. I know he saw me before I saw him because he started walking strangely with this girl and his child into a area that didn’t even have anything for the festival. He purposely was NOT looking back or so it seemed even though the two people he was with were walking behind him and it appeared they were trying to talk to him. They probably had no clue that he was purposefully avoiding me. You maybe thinking I’m crazy to think he was avoiding looking back on purpose but when you are in the situation you can just tell. I decided to just walk behind him for a little while longer even though I was going out of my way to my final destination. He finally turned around and made eye contact and he quickly turned around again.
I left a little shaky but not as shaky as the previous time. Because I’ve realized he is the one who is ashamed. He knows what he did and he has to live with it. He is the one who has to feel guilty when he accidentally runs into me. He is the one who has to remember that he sold my brother the drugs. He is the one who has to remember that he told my brother exactly how to take the drugs. He is the one who has to live with that and I hope it hurts him when he sees me.
These lyrics from Eminem always seem to resonate with me even though the entire song is no way related to what I’m experiencing, this is what I think of when I see JM….
I hope you can’t sleep and you dream about it
And when you dream, I hope you can’t sleep and you scream about it
I hope your conscience eats at you and you can’t breathe …
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