The Equatorial Bulge is not a forcefield.

I wish I had tougher skin.  Sometimes it feels like I feel stress emitting from the pours of people passing me on the street, infecting my thoughts, my emotions, my functionality.  This indirect stress I sense does not compare in any way to how direct stress affects me. 

Even though we speculated and knew in some sense, we found out for sure that my brother is using again.  I don't use. I'm three-thousand miles away.  Why do I feel this so strongly? This shouldn't affect me, but it does.  I am so emotionally invested in the health of the people that I love that I almost force the pain that they are going through on myself to give them a break, to give them a lesser burden to deal with their problems in the least stressful environment possible.  Of course, I know that this is wrong. I know that this is enabling and cruel to everyone in the mix.  

I would do anything for him.  Or, at least, I would have done anything for him.  I finally shut myself off.  I am now blocking myself from those people in my life who continue to abuse drugs and alcohol and take advantage of me.  I hate myself for it.  I never wanted it to be like this. I want to run away.  Now it feels like three-thousand miles isn't enough.  I wish the Equator was some sort of forcefield that would isolate the chaos of the north and south hemispheres within their respective coordinates.  Quito would be perfect then because I would be just barely on the southern hemisphere, blocked from home, but if I wanted to feel it I could travel 30 min by bus and be on the northern hemisphere.  Unfortunately, that's not how it works. 

I never thought I would have to protect myself from my siblings, the people that I tell myself are my rock, the people I am closest to.  But, apparently, I have a lesson to learn. This would not be happening to him and to me if I we didn't need to learn from it.  I keep telling myself that everything happens for a reason to convince myself that it wasn't malicious.  That there was a reason for his actions.  That there was a reason for his cruelty, for all the hurt he inflicted on me. 

I wish the best for him. I hope that he does well. If he wants to get his shit together and wants to be in contact again, he can.  I will never deny him that. For now I need to learn to protect myself. 

Sometimes I am so grateful for all of the pain and suffering my family has endured due to addiction, because from it so many good things have come.  For example, Liz would have never met Pat and had Maxwell had she not been an addict.  Harry would not being doing really well.  I would not be who I am today had my father not been an addict, had I not been surrounded by addiction.  But going through the pain at the moment is so unbearable.  Why can't everything be what we dreamed?

When we were younger, we moved a lot.  Every time the house we were renting would sell, we would have to scramble to find a new place.  I used to worry a lot about not having a place to sleep and my mom would tell us that we would find a place, and if not, we would live in a cardboard castle.  She always knew exactly what to say.  

I feel like starting a  project.  I might make my own cardboard castle full of gummy worms, soda, kitties, everything I ever wanted when I was young.  I wouldn't mind hiding there for a little while.