Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star…
I have a brother who is one year older than me. A year and a day, to be exact. Not long ago, he called and asked to borrrow money — to the tune of $2,000, which is nothing to sneeze at. "You’re my only hope!" he cried. I hung up on him. He called again but I didn’t answer, so he used up a good chunk of my answering machine space begging, pleading, and yes, even crying. I erased it. He called again, and again, and again over the course of a couple of weeks. Each time, he’d leave plaintive, progressively more desperate messages, begging me, saying that since I was his sister, I should help him; that it was the right thing to do. He was going to be out on the streets if I didn’t help. Each time I just wiped them away with a touch of a button. Isn’t technology awesome!
And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time.
When we were growing up, he used to constantly hurt me. I can’t remember when it started, it was just a constant buzz amidst everything else. From the earliest of memories, I was his punching bag, and nothing could stop him. In fact, it got worse as time wore on. Though I begged and pleaded and cried, nothing could stop him and no one else tried. I was a hapless, hopeless victim with no way out. By the time we were teenagers, his methods of victimizing me got a lot more sophisticated, and so it goes. I was held hostage by his very credible death threats, so I couldn’t ever tell anyone what he was doing to me. Parents and pseudo-parents were often not at home, so he was free to do whatever he wanted. I did my best to stay away from home after school, or at the very least, not be home alone with him. It didn’t always work though, which is unfortunate.
There’ll be new dreams,
Maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through
Still to this day, I won’t allow him near me. He doesn’t know where I live. If we have to get together in some sort of family gathering, it’s not at my house, and I won’t allow him to be alone in the same room with me, not even for a minute.
And I don’t really care if he ends up wandering the streets in rags, sleeping under overpasses, whatever. I can’t help him. Really. It’s been a long time, but the logical consequences of his previous choices have finally come full circle. It’s just another circle of life, and it’s come back to haunt him.
We can’t return, we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game
Click here to listen to The Circle Game by Joni Mitchell on youtube
