I may occasionally post some personal posts every once in a while. I mean, that’s what blogs are for as well, right? Plus if I kept it business like all the time, I would feel pretty boring. So if you’d rather not read these, just ignore the “Personal” category or the “personal post” tag to make it easier.

I do hope you read these with me, though.

Also, since I’m talking about some spoilers on Before I Disappear, I suggest turning away if you do not want to be spoiled. I just really need to let this out though. Bear with me.

If you’re still here, thank you for being amazing.

So I guess the main thing that’s been bothering me about Before I Disappear was that at the end, Charlie has to sacrifice himself to satisfy the Dark Nothing so that every single person that was sucked into the wormhole is able to return to the real world. So after all of that, him constantly sacrificing parts of his body and keeping everyone safe through his threads (they were turned into balls of light, almost star like, and he really did keep them safe for those days that he was stuck there), and even after opening up the door between the two worlds, he’s the only one that doesn’t get to make it out.

My heart seriously broke because it was the very end, and Rosie basically knew that she had to let her brother go. He wouldn’t allow her to stay with him, and he couldn’t pass through the door without her. I don’t know if he could have passed through the door after her, but he didn’t. I honestly don’t know how she found the strength to let Charlie go, and how she was able to tell her mom that everything was going to be okay. I really think that goes to show how strong Rose is, and how much she trusts in Charlie.

It affected me so much because I think about my own brother, and how I haven’t been there with him for more than seven years. I absolutely hate being so far apart from him, and there are times where I wish I could just ignore all of my responsibilities here in the mainland, go back to Hawaii, and just be there for him forever. If money wasn’t an issue, I would totally do that.

That’s why this trip to Hawaii was so important for me. He’s been growing up into a young man, and I’ve missed all of that. The last time I lived with him, I was in high school. There’s been some personal things that prevented me from living with him after high school, and honestly I hate that it had to happen, but none of it was my mom’s fault so I don’t blame her for it as much as I thought I would. I think I more thought that she chose someone else over me, but then I had to realize that by thinking that, I was putting her in a bad position because it wasn’t fair to her. Either way, I’m over that, but at least that’s how I felt.

Then living away from Hawaii since 2012 just basically meant that I wouldn’t see my brother again unless he came to see me or I came to see him. Flights to or from Hawaii are not cheap from where I was, and I wasn’t balling out of my mind enough to go every summer or every winter, so the years went by. Maybe three or four years went by before I saw them again. Then another two. And each time, it was only for a limited time because – of course, life still went on. We still had to go to work, go to school, take care of our families. I was so close to my brother growing up, even though we are 12 years apart in age. He was my everything. He still is, but I know that we have grown apart a little because of the distance and time difference.

So when I think about what happened with Rose and Charlie, how she could physically feel his pain and how she had to let him go, knowing that there may not be a chance to ever see him again, I just sobbed. I couldn’t imagine not seeing my brother again, not being there to protect him from the pain and the hurt of the Dark Nothing, or just the growing pains of life. I hate that I’m not there now. It kills me every single day to know that there are things that he’s going through with his dad and him learning about himself, and that I can’t be there to protect him from the hurt. It’s one thing to be able to call him and my mom every day, and message him through WhatsApp, but we are both such bad texters as well so we don’t keep up. We tried to be email pen pals but we both got overwhelmed at looking at a bunch of emails and not having the right time or mind set to respond to our emails properly. We are trying, but I know that both of us just do better when we are together physically.

I was the first person to hold my brother when he was born, besides the doctors that cleaned him up. You’ll see that in the pictures above. You can see that a lot of the pictures are when we were way younger, except for the smaller two on the right, which were from this July when I went home. The difference between what I remember growing up with and what I came home to is staggering. I still can’t believe he’s not a little boy anymore.

This is definitely word vomit now. I just had to let these feelings out because I just felt really sad. I kept thinking about my brother and feeling like I wish I could have been as good of a sister as Rose is. But unlike Rose, I would not have been able to let my brother go. I just couldn’t. It would kill my mom to lose both of us, but it would kill me even more to know that I couldn’t bring my brother back to her. At least if we were both together in the Dark Nothing, he wouldn’t be alone.

I’m going to go cry now.