Day 111 – “Call him my brother!”

Wednesday, 14 March 2007
Day 111 / 34 (59) – “Call him my brother!”

I’m very fortunate that boredom rarely features on my day to day activities. Between reading my favourite blogs everyday and my own blog entries I keep busy. I do computer programming in my free time and I have my favourite TV programs that I watch every night and if I should miss it I make sure the VCR is recording.

So, overall I’m keeping myself fairly busy. Of course I’m still trying to do some of the things I haven’t done in a very long time – like cooking. My brother and I are working on a project together at the moment. I can’t give any details yet, but I promise to post the result on the blog once it is done.

My brother and I are getting along famously. I remember how worried I was about our friendship on Day 1. I guess he started off very sympathetic towards me. I mean, his older brother was going through something, which fair enough he caused himself, but nevertheless struggling to get rid off. He was always there for me. I could count on him to talk to, to listen – even though it was the last thing I wanted to do at that time.

As time went by his attitude changed. I was in this cycle of taking, getting caught, saying I’m sorry and I’ll never do it again, to taking again. Night after night he stayed in a house where you could cut the tension with a knife. He stayed among the fights and the crying and the worry - he clearly also had enough.

He said that until I got clean, really clean, things were not going to be the same between us. I couldn’t blame him. To him it must have looked as if I really didn’t want to stop. As if I wasn’t trying at all. But I was. It is still something I can’t explain to anybody. How you can say, mean and be determined to become clean, get your life in order, never take heroin again – and the first craving sends you directly to the dealer without even blinking.

In the beginning I used to say a lot that I’m sorry, because it wasn’t me. It was a drug addict saying those things, doing those things. To a drug addict there isn’t things like a brother or a mother or a father, or a son or a daughter… there is only a person to steal from, to lie to, to forget… there is only heroin.

Since my brother and I are close again I guess he too has seen that my intentions this time is true. My word still means nothing and I can’t blame anybody for that besides myself. All I can do is show them in my actions that I am changing!