It had been over three months since anyone had heard from him. Through the phone, I could hear the unspoken fear in her quivering voice. There was a deep knowing in her heart that something was wrong but she was afraid to say the words out loud. The connection between a mom and their child is undeniable and she was suffering in silence with each day that went on consumed by a paralyzing fear that her son, my brother, may no longer be living in this world with us.
He is the youngest of four kids with three very bossy and opinionated older siblings. When he was five our parents went through an ugly, painful divorce and both became emotionally unstable and unavailable. He looked to us (the sibs) for support but we were all aching and struggling in our own ways.
This would become his childhood wound, a wound he couldn’t heal from. He was lost and alone and deeply hurting before he could even read and would begin exploring drugs before he made it to double digits in life. Drugs became his escape from the pain and loneliness.
He was too young to know that the more you use, the more your body builds a reliance on the drugs both physically and emotionally. They stunted his ability to develop the critical life skill of coping which resulted in an uncontrollable amount of anxiety that could only be subdued with more drugs. Marijuana turned into oxycontin which turned into fentanyl, then heroine and crystal meth. Before he knew it, his entire life was consumed by the Battle of Addiction.
He had spurts of “sobriety” where he experienced some normalcy: a job, relationship, apartment, cars, travel. (NOTE: Sober is a relative term here – heavy drinking, smoking pot and moderate pill usage is close enough to ‘sober’ because it wasn’t heroine, meth or fentanyl. You learn to take the small wins.)
Over the last several years, his addiction was steadily leading him in a downward spiral. He was frequently in and out of jail, crashing on a friend’s couch, sleeping in his car, single, broke and always chasing the next high. To fund his addiction and lifestyle, he needed cash but couldn’t hold a job. He started stealing identities, elaborate extortion scandals, selling his body, shoplifting and anything else that resulted in him accessing money or stealing things he could sell for money. He had no boundaries. He held no regard for your place in his life. It didn’t matter if you were a stranger, a friend, an elderly person or a family member, thieving was how he survived. If you had something he wanted, he took it.
It was his thieving that ultimately got him kicked out of the state-provided housing he was living in (part of a post-jail rehabilitation program). With nowhere to go, he turned to the streets of Seattle. He has been homeless for a year and a half now and it’s not uncommon to hear from him every couple of weeks, or even months. But it is always from a different, random phone number which meant there is no way to contact him directly.
This time was different though. It was a longer stretch than normal and it was the 3-month span over the holiday season. Not a call or text to say Happy Thanksgiving or Merry Christmas - special days of the year he wouldn’t normally miss. It was mid-January now and no one had heard from him since early October. The growing fear in my mom’s voice felt like an arrow shot straight through my heart. I knew something was wrong. A week later I was on a flight to Seattle to help my family start the search for my baby brother.
We spent five straight days walking through homeless encampments and local shelters showing his picture to everyone we could. We staked out known drug hotels in the areas where he was last known to be in. We read the jail logs and “John Doe” morgue listings daily. We called local hospitals. We filed a “missing persons” report (which turns out is a very difficult thing to do in the city of Seattle post “autonomous zone”). We walked the darkest streets of downtown Seattle where drug deals are known to happen (the sheer volume of tiny tinfoil squares scattered all over the sidewalk confirmed we were in the right place).
We left no corner unturned in our search but we did not find him. Defeated and emotionally exhausted, we stopped the search and hoped that through the contacts we made he would get word that we were there and reach out.
But, something beautiful and extraordinary did happen that week. We met some of the bravest, most courageous, perfectly imperfect souls. We learned that the homeless community is a collective of broken pieces that together form a tightly woven, impenetrable bond. A stunning group of people who come from all different backgrounds each with their own unique story. Despite their differences and reasons for being there, they share an unspoken agreement to love, accept and fiercely protect one other. We learned that this community is a place where many go when they do not want to be found. Borne from a profound sense of loyalty to the community and a vow to respect each other’s privacy, we were met with a strong resistance in our search. A resistance we weren’t expecting and frankly, found very frustrating, but as time went on we began to understand it.
This is a sacred community where they can finally be accepted for who they really are. A safe space to insulate themselves from the shame and judgement that our society places on them. It’s a sovereign community specifically designed to embrace those who don’t fit into our cultural norms and standards. It’s the real-life equivalent of the “Island of the Misfit Toys” in the North Pole fairytales: a sanctuary for the toys that no one understands and no one wants.
This was a mind-blowing realization for me, an epiphany. A pivotal moment where everything I thought I knew about homelessness, the homeless community and addiction was replaced with the unwavering truth that I know absolutely nothing. I made a conscious choice to let go of everything I once believed and gave myself permission to start over from a blank slate. With an open mind, I began to humbly observe and listen.
I began to understand what a privilege it is to have all my mental faculties, a body and mind that operate in harmony, the stamina and wherewithal to hold a job and to live without the shackles of an active addiction. I realized what a blessing it is to have to have daily access to food and water, a roof over my head and to sleep at night without the fear of being robbed or physically harmed.
Most importantly, I understood how my current set of beliefs were misguided and created a tunnel vision that limited my perspective. And in the process, limited my ability to connect with, understand and truly see my brother.
He was a good kid dealt a bad hand. He was a good person who made a bad choice to experiment with drugs at a young and vulnerable age. He was too young to know that addiction runs rampant in our family and to fully understand the detrimental consequences of that choice. He didn’t know that self-medicating would limit his ability to cope and emotionally develop, only further exacerbating his need to self-medicate. And we will never know what came first – the mental health issues that led to self-medicating or the severe drug abuse that created the mental health issues.
What I know now to be true is that with every day that passes, his path back to sobriety and normality gets further and further in the rearview mirror. He’s 37 now and buried deep under the weight of nearly three decades of drug abuse. To make the brave choice to pursue sobriety – a choice that some might call easy or simple - would require an army of support at this point. He would need a team of professionals to provide around-the-clock care for his mental, emotional and physical being for years, not months, along with deep financial resources to afford this level of care. Most likely this path starts in a rehab facility, which he has already been to more times than we can count and failed each time. I imagine he failed for a variety of reasons, but mostly what I think was missing is the mental toughness of a herculean warrior ready to go into a lifelong battle. To muster up this level of strength when you are at your weakest, your rock bottom, seems unfathomable.
This journey also requires an unwavering belief and trust that after you make it through the excruciating process of getting sober, the promise of a new life will be on the other side waiting for you. For my brother that means a clean, healthy life free from anxiety, trauma and night terrors and a fresh start to employment, housing, friendships and love. A life that won’t be realistic or achievable without several more years of deep therapeutic work to peel back the layers of trauma, diagnose and treat the mental health issues. Then comes the process to reintegrate back into society, which we all know can be very unwelcoming when you have multiple felonies on your record, huge gaps in your employment history and you’ve burned every relationship in your life.
I get it now. The journey just barely begins at the point of sobriety. Even with a profound perseverance to pursue the life you dream of, it may never be possible. And yet, there are so many people who are making the courageous choice every day to fight for their sobriety, to stare down their past traumas, to face their demons head on and who are relentlessly seeking healing and inner peace. As Brené Brown says, they are “in the arena getting their ass kicked” every damn day. I humbly and respectfully bow down and applaud you. And, I also now have a deeper appreciation and understanding for others who won’t or can’t make that same choice.
While we didn’t find my brother that week, there are so many precious gifts I received in the process of our search - learning and unlearning my limiting beliefs, evolving my mind and expanding my heart. These gifts have changed me as a person.
But they also created something bigger in me - an uncontrollable burning in my heart to see him one more time. To look him in the eyes and tell him that I see him and I understand now. To hug him tightly in my arms, tell him that I unconditionally love him for exactly who he is and to fill his heart with an undeniable, unbreakable sibling love.
I left Seattle not knowing if my brother is dead or alive. Since we couldn’t confirm that he was dead, we took that as a sign that he must be alive clinging tightly to the tiniest piece of hope we had. I put on a brave, strong front for my family but in my stillness the not knowing was crippling me and I was slowly filling with regrets. The thought of losing him before I could tell him how much he meant to me was almost unbearable.
I came home with a fierce determination to beg, plea and negotiate with the Universe until they granted us one more moment in time. Pleading with them not to take him until he undeniably knew his heart how much he is loved, seen and accepted by me. I’m not sure who needed this moment more, me or him, but selfishly I thought that maybe, just maybe, that heart-filled moment could break through the bubble of shame and embarrassment that consumed him and give him a renewed hope and desire to want to live.
“There will be many things in life that you won’t have control over. They will cripple you, hurt you, break you into pieces but they will also build your character, change you completely as a person. So when you encounter them, don’t fear them. Welcome them as opportunities to grow, to be a better version of you. You will be hurt but in the same process, you will learn how to find a stronger you.” ~ Dhiman
Thanks for sharing your story. I am had misconceptions until it hit close to home. I feel this in so many ways and hope you hear from your brother.