When I was 17 and a senior in high school my brother committed suicide. He was 14 years old and was going into his freshmen year of high school. After he passed away I watched my parents relationship turn hostile towards one another and unfortunately I was left in between as a pawn to use against the other. Personally I found sanctuary in sports, using baseball as an escape from my reality, but as one may guess I could not totally escape. No longer was I Jake, as much as I was the kid who’s brother committed suicide over the summer to my peers at school. Eventually I went to college and walked on to the baseball team, again finding some sort of activity I was familiar in to use as an escape. Unfortunately however I am in my fifth year of college and as my sports career begins coming to an end, a lot of the emotions and things I may of repressed without being entirely aware of are coming to the surface. Truthfully I come from an environment of emotional dysfunction, I have seen my mom attempt to commit suicide, my father is narcissistic, my brother is dead, and I am scared and lost. I feel like I have no role models and I don’t really know how I’ve made it this far exactly. It seems like the foundation I have come from is so intertwined with my reality today, it’s like I’m playing a game of poker poker with a bad hand that I gotta bluff my way to winning with. So I guess of late I have decided to fold, expressing my truths to my family members with mixed results. I guess I will end this post with the fact that I am lost. Over the 5 years since my brother has died so much dysfunction has occurred, not even to mention the dysfunction within my family when he was alive. I am scared that the cards in my hand are broken, that people will see me as a broken person who comes from broken people and that’s who I will be remembered as. Not as Jake.