My parents were sending my brother to rehab. My brother. The one who was only a year older than me. The one that taught me to be the best the best pitcher on my softball team. The one who always shared his games with me. The one who almost seemed unreal in how well we got along. The one who needed to change something, quickly and desperately.

                They hadn’t told him yet. Of course they hadn’t, they had to plan a nice little intervention first. A fucking intervention where everyone he’s hurt has to talk to him about it. And I have to say something. Why wouldn’t I? To my parents, he hurt me the worst. We were near inseparable before. He’s the reason I do everything I do and act the way I do. We were the pair of siblings every parent hopes for…until Matt decided he liked booze. He really fucking liked it—like more than his friends, his family, even more than his beloved little sister.

                I was supposed to say something to him. I was supposed to talk to him about his addiction—about how he abandoned me, about how he wasn’t the same person anymore, about what has changed. But I wasn’t mad. I don’t know what I was. It wasn’t pleasant, I knew that for sure. I missed Matt like hell. But I couldn’t be mad. I didn’t know what to say to him either. “Get your shit together,” didn’t seem right but it was the closest I had come to anything honest, aside from “I miss you.”

                I was supposed to try and convince my brother to go to rehab, well that he needed to go to rehab. And that was the problem. That’s what I couldn’t do. I didn’t want Matt to be shipped off to be fixed by people who didn’t know him. I knew he’d get better if we sent him away, of course I knew that. But what if he wasn’t Matt when he came back? What if the doctors took his soul away when they fixed his addiction? What if his addiction was so a part of him that we couldn’t separate them? What if Matt couldn’t get better and still be Matt?

                I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let him leave. I would rather have this Matt—the angry, hazy, barely-there one than one who acted like a zombie, one who was boring and non-distinct but cured.

                Fine. I didn’t want to let him go, okay? I didn’t trust anyone else with him. I didn’t want to send him anywhere because that’s not how he’s supposed to get better. He’s supposed to get better because he’s happy again not because some doctor messed with his head and fucked him up for the rest of us. I was terrified of him leaving. I was terrified of what they’d do to him…and terrified of what his absence would do to me. He was my everything. And he’d deteriorated, yeah, and I’d had to figure out things for myself but he was always there and sometimes he had moments of clarity. After being gone or passed out for days he’d look at me and ask me how far I’d gotten on a game from years ago or how my best friend was doing. That was how he was supposed to get better, by elongating those little moments that hit my heart so hard I almost cried every time.

                If I could just keep him home and get him to remember that he loved me and his friends and our parents more than alcohol than he’d be cured. If I could just get him to smile—the thought stopped me and I froze. How long had it been since I’d seen him smile? I couldn’t—I couldn’t remember what it looked like. I couldn’t remember what my brother’s smile looked like. I scrambled for a picture of both of us at the zoo, smiling. But it wasn’t right. The smile in the picture wouldn’t fit on him now, his face was too different. I didn’t know what his smile would look like now. That fact killed me. It was wrong. We were too close to be missing things like that.

                We held the intervention. Everyone there said the same generic stuff about him throwing away his life, about not being the same with overblown weeping and dramatics. I didn’t cry I just twitched in my seat, terrified of what could happen. I spoke last. I held my head up and locked my eyes with him, the eyes that looked just like his. “Matt, I don’t remember what your smile looks like.” I said steadily.

“Neither do I.” His eyes were clear again. Sad and broken but finally aware. 

I probably needed help. Fine, I definitely needed help. But rehab doesn’t exist to treat your addiction, rehab exists to treat the problems that caused your addiction. There’s a reason interventions are all about feelings, fucking rehab is all about feelings. You talk to a psychiatrist and go to group therapy and spill the secrets of your fucked up childhood or learn that you have a serious mental problem. If you don’t spill your secrets, if you don’t get help you don’t get cured. That’s my problem. My secret is not acceptable, it’s not a nightmare from my childhood, it’s not something I did, it’s just something I know is very wrong. I started drinking to forget how disgusting all of it is.

It didn’t make me forget but it made it a little easier to deal with. It also helped me make fucking dumb decisions. Like coming in at ungodly hours and settling on the couch with her to watch some nature documentary. Alright, that isn’t that bad but then I curled up under the blankets with her which would only be a little unsettling if I wasn’t such a dumbass. She was so close and everything was calm for once so I just settled my hand on top of hers lightly and it was nice so I curled my fingers in-between hers. She didn’t react at first and then she curled her fingers into my palm and held them there until I passed out.

                The girl I’m talking about is my sister. The girl on the couch was my little sister, Sammy. I got drunk and held her hand because I lust after—love? Fuck it, yeah, I’m in love with her. There’re too many stupid, soft, mushy feelings to just be lust. So I don’t wanna go to rehab because then I’ll have to explain that I drink to forget that I wanna kiss my little sister. Explain that when she brings a boy home my first thought isn’t to protect her, it’s that I’m jealous of him. I’m a shitty brother and an even shittier son—and do you hear that self-hatred? Better chase that down with something hard maybe cider, nice and seasonal.

                This is why I definitely needed help, simple, non-judgmental help. I needed a therapist like Freud, or at least one who likes him. Then when I say that I want to kiss my sister they’ll just stroke their beard thoughtfully and say, “interesting.” But those therapists don’t exist anymore. Members of the psychiatric community are just as disturbed by incest as the rest of society. Guess I picked the wrong time to be a thoroughly fucked up individual.

                The intervention wasn’t even remotely surprising. I was actually surprised that they didn’t call one sooner. It was full of friends I didn’t really like and an ex that never got the memo that she was an ex. They were full of overdramatics about how I wasn’t ‘the same person.’ I had to fight down laughter because they didn’t know anything about me, they wouldn’t know if I changed. Then there were some family members that never visited but somehow managed to make time for this, telling me the same generic tripe about throwing my life away. This was supposed to motivate me? Really? These people I don’t give a shit about throwing Hallmark sentiments at me? Right, sorry, I have seen the errors of my way, I’m off to rehab, everyone. I mean, fuck, I came to more significant conclusions while totally shitfaced.

                Sammy had no reaction to anything anyone else said or did, she just twitched nervously in her seat not looking at me. That was nothing new we hardly looked at each other anymore. We considered it dangerous. She spoke last, the only person I really cared about said one sentence at my intervention. She sat straight up and locked her eyes with mine, I met the gaze for once. “Matt, I don’t remember what your smile looks like.” Her voice was calm and steady and measured.

                “Neither do I.” It was said with a weird clarity I hadn’t felt in a while. Of course she didn’t remember my smile. She was the only thing that made me smile and I couldn’t smile at her that was more dangerous that looking at each other. I should’ve tossed a smile her way just to be difficult but the idea that she didn’t know what my smile looked like sobered me too much to rely on snark. I gave a bitter, faked smile to make up for that. “Do you think you’ll remember if I go to rehab, Sammy?”