saying goodbye

My brother Frankie, leaves in the next few days to go to Iraq. He's a marine. I'm against the war. I'm sitting here crying because even though I hate everything the marines stand for, I understand why he's drawn to it.

We grew up in a very dysfunctional household. Being the oldest I received the brunt of our parents anger and frustration but he wasn't left unscathed. Only 4 years younger than me he also received his fair share of emotional and sometimes physical abuse. Our parents, or rather our mother and my step-father/his father both came from abusive backgrounds and found the cycle hard to break. Things weren't always bad, you just never knew when the next explosion would come.

I left when I was 17. I decided I wanted to travel, at that time this meant I hitchhiked across the country going to shows, living in abandoned buildings and became part of a tight knit subculture of other people my age who mostly came from pretty shitty home lives.

Almost like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys.. had they allowed people of all genders. I was very distrustful at the time of those I considered adults, my reasoning was I had found my own family amongst these others who I identified with greatly, and I didn't need my parents for anything.

Eventually, I decided I wanted to do more with my life than worry about friends who were going to drink themselves to death, living in potentially dangerous situations with people with potentially dangerous backgrounds and moved here to Albany where I found a great community centered around the Albany Free School and again, a tight knit group of people I feel I can rely upon more than my family of origin.

Frankie, did a pretty similar thing. More than anything he wanted a group he could belong to and feel safe and secure in. Is there any place that can brainwash you into believing you have that more than the military?

At 17 years old he started to beg my mother to join the marines. She is a much better person and parent than she was while we were growing up and was distraught over his decision and so refused to sign the papers. February 24th 2005 the recruiter showed up and picked him up from school. It was my brothers 18th birthday. He could sign for himself. He did. My baby brother signed up to be a marine.

At the time I was pissed off at him. How many hours had we spent fighting about war, greed and capitalism? For the last 2 years he's been in South Carolina training. Not too long ago he received his orders. Like I said before, he's leaving pretty soon.
I'm mad at him, scared for him. I'm also mad at my mother. I haven't told her lately but I blame her for him joining the military. I feel that, just like I searched for a family outside of our blood relations, so did he.