Heartache

I have a tremendous heartache lately as I worry and pray for my baby brother. I am the oldest of three kids, and my brother is 17 months younger than me which makes him 27. He has always been a stubborn person, you can't talk to him without him getting mad and he has a horrible temper. He first got into trouble when he was about 16 when he got a DUI. Since then he's had at least one more of those, along with at least one arrest for posession, and who knows how many tickets for other acts of extreme stupidity.

For several years my prayers were that he would simply grow up and act like the man that I know he was raised to be. Recently though, since we've been closer to home I worry even more because I can see the destruction that he is causing himself. Because I can see it myself it worries me more. It is causing my parents and grandparents grief that they do not deserve, and that breaks my heart. I love my brother and I don't want to see bad things happen to him, yet I am seeing them with ever increasing regularity.

Part of me wants to punch him and tell him to really look at what he's doing to himself, and the other part of me wants to hug him and tell him how much I love him and that I don't want to watch his self destruction anymore. I have no idea what to do....I mean, you really can't help an adult who doesn't want to help himself, right?

All I know for sure is that I feel sorry for him on some level, and I know that it hurts to watch someone you love do such awful things when I can't do anything about it. I just want him to stop the drinking and the drugs and get his life right. Somewhere beneath all of that is a good person, one of the most tender hearted little boys I've ever met. A boy who loves elderly people so much that when he was 10 years old, instead of playing with Clint, he would go next door and talk to Aunt Grace for hours. And I don't want to have to go to my baby brother's funeral. Especially one where I will feel sorry for the preacher who will have to lie about the person that he was. I just wish it didn't hurt so much.