unsaid; between a man and his brother

Today I spoke with the brother of a child molester. This man was a teacher, which terrifyingly, grievously and ominously is an occupation that he once shared with his brother. A knot in my stomach and throat developed.

As the man openly admitted, confessed to his brother’s crimes and sins, my only verbal response was “Oh!” on repeat. The record player had broken again. My mind shattered into shards and pieces, the scattered cells having no idea what it even looks like to see them fit back together again. The oddity in timing is that this past week I have been riddled with nightmares. The night before my body was frozen solid in the trauma of memory, reliving the vicious loop over and over. Too limp and morose to get up once more in yet another attempt to fix the broken player.

The man recalled to me with sorrow, “It’s hard to work in the same profession with the same last name as a man like that.” I wanted to tell the man that I am sorry but my tongue was weakened again, silenced into the shame and guilt at the hands of men much like his kin, his own flesh and blood. But I wanted to speak that nothing is in a name, that he is not his brother and I wanted him to know that I recognized him, truly who he was. The man before me inquiring as to why I had given up on my education. A man who shared my love of history and who was attempting to encourage me in my pursuit of further education. Never once did I see his brother standing before me.

Yet still my tongue ran dry and weighed heavy. The tension and the air felt so as well. A vacuum had come over our space. I did see him, this tall, bulk of a man but I also saw lean and lanky muscles, hands that could hold the sticks to beat the rhythm of a drum and also hold my sanity in them. So I silenced myself away from the subject.

I couldn’t tell this man that I had once been a victim to someone who shared his brother’s madness. I could not tell this man that I had been a victim to the sin of his sibling. I couldn’t tell him that a blemished surname should not hold the entirety of a family hostage at the hands of the divergent. I couldn’t speak even as I tell him of my love of words, I couldn’t find the ones that could hold the gravity that connected us as human beings.

I couldn’t tell him that I am still plagued by the tension in my muscles and bones. That I am ever vigilant in my awareness. Always deciphering and decoding, looking for men like his brother so I can turn the other cheek. Or maybe so my blood could boil, my knuckles tightening white to the point of never feeling relief until I see red. As I heard it in his voice, that he carried the weight of these grievances, I could not tell him that I also carried the weight of another man’s sin around on my back.

So I simmer in the regrets of not relieving this man of his guilt and of his shame. There should be no indignity in a name yet I find it in my own sometimes. So I could not tell him. I could not tell him, for I know all too well that words don’t cure the distress and delinquency, the chagrin and the culpability.

Yet I still could have validated him in the fact that he is not his brother. Although for this to occur I feel I must also be able to relieve myself of the fact that I am not my own defiler either.