by Jordan DelesparraLiving with an addict can teach you a lot about forgiveness. Upon graduating high school, my family and I discovered that my older brother, J-, was abusing painkillers. For the months leading up to our discovery, the chief complaint around the house was that money was constantly missing from our wallets or emergency stockpiles. My mother, father, oldest brother, and myself each had money stolen from us on various occasions. By process of elimination, we quickly determined that it was J- who was stealing. I remember confronting J- multiple times about the money that was taken from my wallet. Any approach I took, whether gentle or aggressive, he always denied having stolen any money. He would even scream at me that he was telling the truth. I could tell that something was off with him, although I didn’t suspect drug addiction. I had known he smoked marijuana frequently, but didn’t know about anything else. I remember specifically sitting at the dinner table one night, as a family, and noticing that his pupils were extremely small. I even made a remark to him about his eyes. For months and months he had hidden his addiction very well. He was a master of deceit. The situation escalated around the time of my high school graduation party. The majority of family members gave me either cash or checks as a gift. I was being cautious and decided to hide all of the money in an envelope under my mattress. A few days later I noticed that two of the checks I was given were missing. The checks were from both of my grandmothers; so I reached out to each of them and had them track their checks. I assumed my brother had taken them from me. Interestingly enough, J- had changed my name on the checks to his (both of our names being with the letter J and contain 6 letters) and cashed them. He made $250 dollars on behalf of my graduation. I felt so infuriated and hurt. My brother’s battle with addiction lasted more than three years. When my family and I intervened initially, he was clean for a few months, but eventually relapsed. He asked for help at one point after that, which is when my parent’s sent him to a facility upstate for a 30-day rehabilitation program. Unfortunately, he relapsed again shortly after completing the program. It seems as if he was never actually clean during this time. Drugs turned J- into the ultimate con artist. I didn’t even recognize my own brother. His actions, all of the stealing, made me develop strong feelings of anger and dislike towards him. For a while I found it difficult to trust J-. He put my family and me through some very challenging obstacles. To this day my father still doesn’t trust him completely. My father has gone as far as patting J- down before letting him into his house. As part of his repent, J- had paid my parents back in small increments (he had stolen much more from them, including valuable objects which he sold). In my opinion, gaining the money back did not negate any of the things J- did, nor did it solve his addiction problem, but I suppose it was a way for him to assume some responsibility for his actions. I don’t know whether I consciously decided to forgive my brother or if my feelings of anger and dislike towards him just slowly subsided. However, I have never been the kind of person who holds grudges. Unlike my father, I don’t hold J-‘s addiction against him. I understand that my brother wasn’t himself; his addiction made him go to unimaginable lengths that he never would have considered in a clear state of mind. I also believe that not forgiving someone, or maintaining anger towards someone is not affecting him/her, but rather yourself and your own state of peace. My main concern was for J- to get clean and remain clean. By forgiving him, by letting go of all the harmful things he had done, I was helping him get better. So, forgiveness, in my opinion, allows one to remain peaceful and it establishes a positive well-being. If I had not forgiven my brother, I would have remained an angry and negative individual who has difficulty trusting others.
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