Saturday, October 6, 2007

3.6 Write about a relative you get along with the least/Writers Muses

There was a time when my brother Niko and I were inseparable, from the moment we woke up to the time we went to bed, unless we were at school, we were in each other's company. It's funny how much you can forgive as a child, someone does you wrong, you trade a few words, a few blows, and it's all over with.  You may say you hate someone today, but by tomorrow you're back to being the best of friends, or that's how it was with us.  Until that day, that day that changed things forever.

It was after Vukovar, after I'd lost my family and come back to my father's home after being in the camp. Nothing was the same for me anymore, and as much as they wanted me to be the same person I had been when I'd left, I knew I couldn't be.  He had died in Vukovar with my family, and nothing they could do or say could change that. It wasn't that he didn't try, he would coax me out to visit old friends, to sit in the cafe, or to drink in the bar, but it wasn't me there, it was just the shell of who I'd become.

In the end I knew I had to leave, and that was the beginning of the end for us, he called me a coward, he claimed I was running away, maybe he was right.  All I knew was if I stood any chance for a life it had to be some place other then where I found myself surrounded by all I had lost. He told me I was being selfish, maybe he was right about that as well, but, what else could I do?  If I stayed I was lost, my only hope for a future was in leaving,  as painful as it was. So, I left, I left them all to save myself, and he's never forgiven me.

 

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