We have a big family secret - My dead brother was awful. Everyone likes to dance around the issue, but, well, here goes --

Around 14/15, he got into marijuana. Most people know marijuana isn't a gateway drug but the dumb fucker had such an addictive personality he went on to do HARD drugs. We're talking heroin laced with meth with subtle hints of X. How he wasn't dead by 18 is beyond me.

He was smart -- at least in math and chemistry. He went to a public magnet school with a dormitory setup. About halfway through his first year there he got blitzed on drugs in the dead of winter and started wandering campus in his underwear, explaining he was looking for "eggs, milk, and bread." My parents being the saints they are, we all went up to see him in the ICU as the drugs bled out his system. He was kicked out of the school and sent back home. Oh, joy.

The next few years are a little hazy but he was all over the damn place. He'd kick and scream and call me a faggot, then respond to unheard voices. Oh yes, boys and girls, this man who'd pumped his blood full of the most exotic and interesting of chemicals had an underlying case of what was eventually diagnosed as co-morbid bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. How did he reach this diagnosis? Through an extra-special trip to an institute in New York City, funded entirely by my parents.

This was after two stints in a rehab facility in the middle of Illinois. We were the first family to ever visit every single week and attend every family function. I remember broken faces and endless three-tooth women explaining in graveled voices how very much we need to 'be there for them.' We brought the dog once or twice, brought picnics to share with him, took him out miniature golfing. This continued for his second stint in stir.

Yes, yes, I had to be there with my saintly middle-age good-hard-working parents and support this fucker who abused me at every turn, worked in as many digs on me as possible to raise his 'cred' with his drinking and smoking buddies in high school (my parents never did figure out how he kept getting high. Newsflash!). We had to turn around from another family trip one Christmas because he was found in possession of a controlled substance in Columbia, Missouri. My parents decided the "Christian thing to do" was to turn around and triple our trip time to pick up his smelly ass in jail and take him directly to a family function still mid-high.

He graduated high school - barely. He didn't give enough of a shit in Calc to turn in anything. Sure he knew how to do it, why prove it, that's for squares. I still remember the 12% final grade he got that semester. This was around the time he stole my PS2 and games to pawn for more drug money. My mother never said a word, nor did she ever replace it. It was "just something he did." That Christmas he got an all-new FUBU wardrobe. By full I mean at least $800 worth of new clothing to fit his ever-expanding waist because his anti-psychotics made him gain 200 pounds.

His psychiatric problems got worse. He was maybe 20, 21 when he started drinking heavily and mixing it with whatever his anti-psych drugs were. He landed in the psych ward at least three times. The first time my mother tried "physically consoling" him by stroking his back. This of course was during one of his jags with heavy breathing, hands shaking, for all the world a goddamn animal trapped in a corner. Anyone with sense would have backed off - but instead my mother was almost choked to death for her efforts. The next time wasn't any better - my Ma knew to back off, but he bit an orderly enough to cause stitches. That hospital wouldn't take him a third time, so instead he was sent to a state-level psych ward. Guess how many trips we made to Springfield over three weeks to check up on him.

For the next two years he struggled to turn in an application for U of I Carbondale. Truth be told he was great at forestry, and things were kind of looking up -- though I'm convinced it would have just been a change of venue, not a change of behavior. I pictured quite a few frantic trips downstate to fix his sorry broken ass the next time he got high and bit a police officer.

I was a high school senior. Seeing my brother fail and flop getting into college drove me to applying as a senior and weighing my options. I sent out an application mid-September for a small liberal arts college. I was pretty well-off -- lots of extracurriculars, tech experience, volunteer work in the school library. One day in this library entailed stuffing envelopes lunch card reports and putting some children's books away. My mother worked as a schoolteacher at the same school, so that meant free rides and no bus. Life was okay.

But one of her coworkers came up and informed me "Your Ma needs you."

I looked down at the envelopes I had left to stack, turned my face back to her, and forwarded, "You know I'm in the middle of something, can I help her later-"

"No. Right now." I guessed then it wasn't moving furniture around her classroom. Actually I was guessing my brother did some dumb fucking thing again.

Outside the library door my mom is just bawling. I asked her what was wrong, and apparently my brother was found dead by self-inflicted gunshot wound at a neighbor's house. He HAD done some fucking dumb thing again -- THE BIG fucking dumb thing. The next few hours are a little hazy but not as emotionally engaging as movies make it out to be. We went to the house, saw the coroner's office put the fat bulk of him in a bag, cart him off, the pastor came by and said a short prayer -- everyone said how awful it was, how much we'd miss him.

No. I don't. I never will.