My brother has always been different. When we were born, he was born almost deaf, he needed glasses. He wore a helmet for the first year of his life. He eventually went on to wear hearing aids. He didn't know he was different, he was just born that way.

My brother has always been different. In high school, he wasn't part of the popular crowd. He wasn't someone who spoke to many. He was quiet and kept mostly to himself. When he decided to go to class, he participated. He was a smart kid and still is, earning a 24 on the ACT his first time, and the average is a 21. Like I said, he's always been different.

My brother has always been different. When he was 16, my brother met a girl who introduced him to a whole new world. The new world, however, wasn't one that was happy. It was a world filled with drugs, and she introduced him and helped him find an outlet for all of his frustration.

After they broke up, he abused his newfound outlet, consistently high, ditching family events, gatherings and anything else that didn't have to do with his friends. After a while, drugs became his new hobby. It wasn't unusual for my parents to expect him to come high to family events if he showed up at all.

The house that once was home to all of us started to feel less than, filled with fighting between my parents and my brother. Now, dust collects as objects that used to sit on desks and in jewelry boxes have been taken and sold all for something that everyone, but him, disapproves of.

The past few years, in being forced to grow up, and grow up fast, I've learned a lot about drug addiction and loving someone who struggles with it.

Loving an addict means always being scared and tired. There are days when I want to walk away, but I can't leave him. I cannot stop loving him. After all, he's my brother, my blood.

Loving an addict means always waiting for a phone call. A phone call from my mom or dad that something happened to him, that he got sent to jail or worse. After all, there are three options when dealing with addiction: jail, rehabilitation or death.

Loving an addict means blaming them for the pain caused. I realize now that I blamed my brother for the pain he caused in our family, and for the riff that was created between all of us. I blamed him for his blind faith in "friends" who eventually left him, claiming that he wasn't himself. I blamed him for a lot of things, yet, some of it was my fault as well.

The one, and most important takeaway, from my experience, though, is that loving an addict is sad and awful, but it's still worth it. Family is family and at the end of the day, he's one of my people and I wouldn't ever want to change that.