i'm crying. tears clean out my heart. a friend of my mom's called while she was out and asked me a few general questions about how life was going in my house. somehow we got into the story of how my brother got sick, how it changed all of our lives, and how it's made my mom who she is today. but the woman asked about me. and around here, it can't ever be about me. my brother needs so many things, and my mom's got all these huge burdens of caring for him and trying to cook sometimes and clean and work and deal with the school district from hell. so if i'm having a hard time dealing with life, living in the midst of a business that exists to take care of my brother, i need to deal with it and not add more of a burden onto an already burdened family. so i deal with it in other ways, i've always had people in my life that understand and get me out of the house when i can't take it. but it hasn't happened in a while, and an unexpected compassionate voice left me crying in my kitchen. it's just hard, sometimes. i remember back before he was sick, things were so different. david was so different. my mom was so different. and now there are all these therapists in my house, tss workers, home tutors, occupational therapists, behavioral therapists... and i know it's a lot better to have all of these people roaming the house than to have my brother losing it all the time, getting into things, pacing and talking and pacing some more. so there's brent, and mr. williams, and nora, and lori, and a host of other people that i say hi to when i'm attempting to grab some breakfast (which i can no longer do in my pajamas). and there's my mom, at her laptop, making angry phonecalls to a school district that could care less about a schizophrenic, mentally disabled teenager. and then there's me, blessed today because somebody asked me how i'm doing. and the truth is, i'm doing just fine. but it's so nice to be asked once in a while.