I Believe in Having the Heart to Give…

I Believe in Having the Heart to Give…

I believe in having faith. I had faith in my older brother Christopher Anthony and I still do today. Through all his failures I still gave him chances. Everybody thought I was wrong, but I knew deep in my heart that my brother was going to change. My brother always took care of me and my younger brother Jaiden. He also supported us with whatever we wanted to do and now it is my turn to return the favor.

It all started when I was in 4th grade. My parents began to argue a lot. Soon after, they announced that they were getting a divorce. My parents fought on our family’s most important days of the year, Christmas and New Years. Little did they know that as quiet as Christopher was about the whole situation, it was tearing him up inside.

About a year later my mother already had a boyfriend and a house. By then it was still trying to sink in that our parents just got divorced. That is when I really started to notice he had done a complete 360. He began getting these angry and annoyed moods. It was like living with a complete stranger. Someone I didn’t know.

Soon after, Chris started committing weird actions, like stealing, drinking, and smoking. My mother would find empty beer bottles that she had received as gifts in his room. She also found notebooks with drawings in them about the history of the Bloods gang. At this point I knew my brother had been enrolled in something he was not supposed to even worry about. By then, Chris had already been expelled from his school because of gang-related incidents.

Then and there is when he really began to surprise me. Chris was always full of life, energy, confidence, and laughter. Now I started to believe that my brother was under a lot of pressure with his social life. When my parents were divorced, Chris had already been in high school. He had many friends who he had grown up with, like Juan and Kendal. Now, he had to make new friends because we moved. I believe he felt lonely and scared.

Christopher just turned 18 years old this month on April 12th, 2009. He is attending a high school in Pennsylvania to obtain his high school diploma. After he is done, he is going to join the National Guard and go through basic training. He plans to become a member of the Border Patrol after he graduates. He will be stationed at Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Texas. My family and I live in New Mexico. That’s why he chose Ft. Bliss, to be close to the family.

I never gave up on my brother. I always had faith in him. I always gave him chances to do the right thing, and in result of doing so, I got my brother back.