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I could argue as much as I want that being bullied for so long made me one as well, hence the “when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you,” but I would be lying. I am not going to blame my brother because even though he was one of the main reasons I ended up beating up my friends, it was ultimately my decision to do it.

I don’t truly recall how old I was when this happened; I just know that for a fact my brother has always been eight years older than me. For some unknown reason, my brother loved to fight a lot and on many occasions liked to watch me fight. I guess it was fun; well technically it is as we, not everyone though, like to watch contact sports. But it being a sport is a totally different beast. I can’t say I was forced, but somehow it kind of was since he was bigger and meaner than me. So I tried to keep the peace with him and would do what he would ask me to.

I remember coming back from school with my friends. We were like a block away from getting home when my brother suddenly popped up out of nowhere. I didn’t see where he came from at all. He instigated my friends whom just ignored him. And that made him get angrier. He ended up telling me to beat up my friend and I looked around and shrugged. I didn’t want to fight him, but something happened. It almost felt as if my friend said that I couldn’t and in the end we ended up throwing blows. We went back and forth tugging on each other trying to get punches in. Mind you, we were barely in elementary so our fighting skill was trash. He ended up with a bloody nose and I with a broken friendship. After that we never really talked.

This kept going on for a really long time until my brother finally got bored and let me be. But the damage had been already done and I had lost many good friends throughout that ordeal. Once I moved from that school I had lost contact with all of my friends. It wasn’t until I was going to college that an old friend of mine recognized me. We were taking a class together and caught up on a lot of things. But it wasn’t the same. We never got back to being friends or we tried of hanging around of that sort. I guess it was just giving into the nostalgia of looking back into what was once our pasts. We were still pretty young; I think I was nineteen or twenty years when we caught up. I wonder if he still had grudges of what had transpired. Even the whole moving away was seemed as a mistake I had made even though I had no say in that regard.

Now as an adult I often think about how dynamic that area I grew up in my early years was. It was one of the rich parts of the city, Sunset Heights, yet there were so many small areas of extreme poverty right next to it. Those shitty apartments I grew up are still there, all decrepit and trash ridden. And oddly enough around them are the nice condos and the fancy homes. I would often cut through some fancy apartments and go south towards a park I used to enjoy spending time at. Once you went a little bit more into the south you would start to notice the change in the types of houses. You could see the difference in economic status just by watching the awful weed filled front porches. Even the pavement was deteriorated. But that area was fun as hell. I had a lot of other friends that lived around there. I even still remember the corner store where I used to buy chocolates for two quarters. My favorite was the Nestle Alpine White with Almond bars.

I few days ago I ended up going back there just to visit as I waited for my friend to finish with some errands she had to take care of. The streets are the same and most of the houses seem a litter bit better off than before. I saw a few duplexes that I had never seen before. The park seemed a lot smaller, but had at least been renovated. I even passed up by that famous house that was right up the alley from where I lived. That house was famous for being the entrance to long tunnels used for smuggling people which ran into the city square.

It felt a little bit odd being back there again, reminiscing about the good old days when life wasn’t as hard as it is now. Or maybe it was just simpler since being a child is about one of the simplest forms of life. Having few worries, yet dealing with difficult life situations whose effects deeply scar our hearts and minds.