There was a story in his eyes. A story that contained loneliness, sadness, and helplessness. His eyes would usually be covered up by his long brown shaggy hair and his Led Zeppelin zip up. However, for the times he would let me in: my own eyes would display fear. Fear that shook my insides, and fear that wanted to help. He constantly looked tired, not the type of tiredness from a hard workout, but the type that he never got sleep, because he couldn’t. There was always a story in his eyes. A story that held many sleepless nights, tears, and a silent scream for help. Screaming on the top of his lungs; it wasn’t loud enough. 
He had a favorite sweatshirt, it was an overall misty gray with dark and white stripes all over. The hood of his sweatshirt would always be up, being longer than usually, the bottom of the sweatshirt landed five inches below his hips. Under his hood he would wear his expensive headphones, trying to block out all the noise, but maybe it was to keep all the thoughts in. Once he hit High School things began to spiral down. Freshman year went somewhat smoothly, however when Sophomore year approached everything was falling down. In my opinion, depression is a disease. Slowly and surely it captured him, it took its own goddamn time to mess him up, and it left him not fully recovered. My house suddenly changed: cigarette butts laid on the cement outside, smoke eroded through the walls, and kindness left for winter. Looking back at it all, there were series of moments that began to build up on one another, moments that expressed fear, lack of commitment, skepticism, but quickly it all became one. Winter Break of 2010 was the first memory of it all, snow began to fall more forcefully outside, and with the winds starting to pick up a blizzard formed. The whole family gathered up to have a family meal, he wasn’t there. He was always late. My mother made chicken with mouth-watering potatoes, salty brussel sprouts, chicken noodle soup, and cranberry slices. Ten minutes passed. No sign of him.
“Mom! It’s been ten minutes, can I just eat? My food is getting cold,” as I said that, loud thumps were coming from downstairs. Opening the door, his head remained low and his baggy pj’s reeked of desperation. He grabbed his food at the island in the kitchen, and began to eat while he sat down.
“Let’s say grace,” my mother announces. We all stopped eating, fold our hands, and bow our heads. He continues to eat. “Bless us Oh Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from thy bounty, through Christ, Our Lord. Amen,” we all say in unison. He remains to eat. Throughout dinner, I studied him, watching how we all went around the table saying how our day went, and him not saying anything. It wasn’t a normal dinner, but it wasn’t quite different either, I’ve noticed that something was slowly forming, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was at the time. After dinner, it was my day to clear the table, being snobby and immature, I refused. Screaming on the top of my lungs for refusal, I angered him.
“Shut your goddamn mouth up!” he roared, I swore the house shook. He ran over to the corner of the kitchen where I was screaming, pushing me hard, he knocked me over as my knee knocks into the sharp corner. Furry rushes through my veins, my face turns red, tears cascade from my cheeks, and I quickly feel the pain in my knee. Blue, black, and purple vast appalling bruises cover my knee, and a dent the size of a quarter is exposed. He walked away, and that’s when I knew everything was going to change.
He began to smoke, he kept his lighter and cigarettes in a Hard Rock Cafe box that held a cup he never used. I watched behind a laundry basket, as he left his room with the box and locked the bathroom door behind him. I waited there for forty minutes, he still hadn’t come out. The bathroom fan turns on and I began to smell the scent of Febreeze through the doors cracks, he leaves the bathroom. Later, I locate cigarette butts buried in the trash can under toilet paper, trying to be hidden though I still found them. I kept quiet, not fully understanding the type of sadness he was dealing with. Nine months had passed since the “incident” and I knew this was a of type of sadness that I had never experienced before, or could ever thought could be. When his sadness launched, I thought it was just going to be a faze. Like he wasn’t talking at the dinner table, because he got a bad test grade or the girl he liked didn’t like him back, but no it was far from that. In those past months, he stopped coming to dinner, he stopped sleeping in his own bed and moved downstairs in the basement, and he bought his own drum set. The noise of the drums was loud and obnoxious, but my interpretation of it was maybe those screams were a cry for help. No one heard it, besides me. Twelve months passed, a year since the warmth of my house grew cold. Whispers were spread throughout my house, my mother said a few words, he said a few, and slowly I gathered it up knowing what was happening to him. They called it depression, one that was caused by genetics. I was young, around eleven years old at the time, and I couldn’t understand it. Pressing my ears against the cracks of the door, things were slowly piecing together.
“Your father and I had it at this age and we took medicine for it, and still are today. We’re going to take you to a psychiatrist, talk to him and you’ll feel a little bit better, but really the medicine will do the trick.”
“Mom, things have been really hard for past year for me, I’m sad all the time, and I-I-I don’t know why. I-I don’t feel important, and I’m scared. I’m really scared,” his voice was shaking, and I could hear water welled up from his eyes. I slowly backed away from the door, sat on my bed, and cried. Cried and prayed that the depression would die inside him.
There’s a saying that says, “The most hardest parts must happen before things can get better,” that saying is absolutely true. Thunder roared over the pounding rain outside as I sat on a rocking chair enjoying a quiet afternoon to myself. 
“I am not allowing you to go, and that is final!” my mother yells over the storm outside.
“They understand me mom. They’re like me,” he responds after her. I remained sitting on the rocking chair, in true shock.
“They are a bad influence. You’re drinking and smoking already. You need to surround yourself with people that will cure your depression not embrace it!”
“The smoking and drinking helps me with it, stop controlling me.”
“I am only trying to help! Are you taking your medicine?” he didn’t answer, but I knew he was no longer was taking it. The medicine made him nauseous, tired, and sometimes wouldn’t make him think straight. Everything else was a blur, him and my mother continued to scream at each other back and forth. Next thing I knew, he ran out of door with the the keys, and drove off. My mother ran up to her room crying. It was then when my glass sheet of innocence began to crack. I saw things, I kept quiet about them, and it was then when I finally started to understand them. That day will always forever be in my memory, after he took off I ran out in the rain. In the back corner of my backyard there was a wooden platform being propped up by a maple tree. I grabbed a towel and a rosary, laying under the wood I prayed for my brother’s arrival and his depression. I grew cold in a matter of seconds, but I was offering it up for his two years of depression. Two hours passed and I came inside, there he was at the kitchen table crying to my mother with a full bottle of anti-depressants. There’s a saying that says, “The most hardest parts must happen before things can get better,” soon after things got better.
There was a story in his eyes, and I told it in its most honest form. After that stormy day he stopped going to the psychiatrist, because he grew stronger and his medicine was refined. He got a job as a swim coach and an employee at Kohl’s Department Store. Working out everyday and building up his running stamina he lost sixty pounds. He smiled more often, moved out of the basement, and talked to me. We had lovely family meals and spent time together with all our siblings. There were a couple bumps in the road like the time he got in an awful car crash, but he managed to rebuild his strength and not fall into the depths of depression. There was always a story in his eyes, and I watched it through my own. I watched it behind laundry basket’s, locked doors, rocking chairs, and across dinner tables. There is always a story in my eyes, the story of the loss of innocence, learning, and growth. They said his depression was caused by genetics, and maybe sometime down the road, I’ll be diagnosed with the disease. Although, it doesn’t scare me, because he taught me how to fight it, and I’ll fight no matter how long it takes. There was always a story, screaming on the top of his lungs; it was always loud enough for me to hear.