Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 84065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84065 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
He wrote about his excitement as summer approached after my first year of college, knowing I would be coming home and of all the trouble we would get into.
I devoured the words with a smile plastered on my face about how ecstatic he was when I got drafted by the Boston Eagles. It wasn’t nearly the same level of enthusiasm as when he got accepted into college, but he was determined to follow in his big brother’s footsteps.
When I was with the Eagles and won the Cup, it was the one and only time he made drawings and doodles in the journal. He wrote of his pride and joy and punctuated it with rough sketches of the Eagles’ logo and of my jersey number.
There was a touching entry about his realization that he was gay. He’d suspected as much since he was a young boy, but he chronicled his first kiss with a guy who went to our high school who, in a million years, I never would’ve thought was gay. But then again, I never suspected Brooks either.
That entry was quite detailed, and it moved from a fumbling kiss to roaming hands, and I had to stop reading. I didn’t want or need the details. That was private to Brooks, and I’d no more read his accounting of his first time if it was with a woman than I would with a man.
I can imagine how my brother felt, though. The validation that must have come that he knew who he was. I remember well the intoxication of being with a girl for the first time, and I imagine Brooks reveled in his experience as much as I had.
I skimmed to the last paragraph of that entry.
I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. Things are clear, and I’m ready for my future.
The experience had brought solace to a young man who was tortured over his sexual orientation and whether his feelings were real.
I was a bit brokenhearted, however, by the very last sentence: I can never let our parents know because I can’t handle their hate.
It was my brother’s first real indication that there was going to be some level of isolation in his life because of who he was. He didn’t mention anything in his pages about whether he would tell me, and I found that troubling.
Despite the good, there was a lot of bad shit that I read too.
My father was relentless in his harassment of Brooks after I left for college. With me no longer around to control, he focused all that extra on Brooks. He also used me as a means to motivate my brother, comparing my greatness with my brother’s weaknesses. I found through numerous entries that if Brooks wasn’t making my father happy between how he performed in school and on the ice, my father would throw me in his face. He would laud me as the successful one in the family and would say, “Why can’t you be as good as your brother?” on almost every occasion where he found fault.
This was abusive. It may not have been delivered with fists or belts, but every word cut deep. I know, because I used to get the same when I lived at home. But Brooks had it worse after I left because there was no one to share the abuse with.
It was, in my opinion, the start of the systemic poisoning that my father insinuated into my brother’s mind and is probably the foundation of all that was bad between us at the time Brooks died.
Other entries were incredibly bittersweet. When I first got injured while playing with the Eagles, Brooks was beside himself with worry. He knew just how catastrophic even a simple injury could be to a hockey career.
I had to step away from my reading after one particular entry Brooks made after I got released from the Eagles and sent down to the minors. Brooks was just starting his career with the Titans, and he was so conflicted over my fall from grace. So much so, he couldn’t even enjoy his fortune because he was far too worried about my misfortune.
During this time, he documented my father’s continued mind games. He was no longer throwing at Brooks how great I was as a means to motivate him to perform better. Instead, it was a lot of shit-talking about my failures to help Brooks shine brighter. My father apparently spoke a lot of crap about me to my little brother and used it as an opportunity to launch from my coattails to his.
God, my dad was such a dick, and Brooks knew what he was doing. He never shared that with me, though, not wanting to cause me pain.
Learning about Brooks’s struggle with alcohol addiction within his writings was very subtle, and I might not have recognized it had I not known now that he was, in fact, an alcoholic. There were lots of entries about parties he attended and good times with friends and teammates. Many of those ended in admitted blackouts.