The Dark Side of Finding God

It's always a challenge looking back on your life and memories and then creating a timeline for it. As if life's suppose to be some smooth sail with no tidal waves or sinkholes reversing or putting a halt on any progress you've made.  When I look back on my life, it was never a smooth sail. Not even for one day. I was always secretly depressed, suffering from insomnia, anxiety, and spent a lot of time crying. At least that's how I remember it. But one thing about me is I'm stubborn as a bull.  Some people look at stubbornness as a flaw; but for me it's what kept me going, even when it felt like all odds were against me.  My darkness came at a very young age, I was a child. Absent/alcoholic/addict father- with a good heart, he just suffered a lot. A hurt, heartbroken, frustrated, and damaged mother-who had been through her own traumas. A younger brother- my best friend, or so I thought.  It was your typical dysfunctional family just trying to get by. My dad would disappear out of nowhere. Sometimes just for a few days, other times for years. This lead to my mother, brother, and I having to move around a lot; due to the instability caused by my dad and my family's finances. My dad would disappear over and over again until he finally just never came back. My parents divorced and my mom remarried a few years later when I was around 12 years old. I cried a lot growing up. My brother too. Mostly from wondering where my dad was and why he left. I think this pain that my brother and I shared is what made us so close growing up. I would sleep in his bed as a kid when I was scared during thunderstorms at night, we played with barbies together, he would even let me dress him up in my tutu costume. We depended on each other and stood up for each other- at least that's how I saw it.  Little did I know that my brother's sadness about my dad started to develop into anger and hatred as he grew older. He would get into a lot of fights at school and at home, while I was getting into daily battles with my mom at home. Growing up with an unreliable/unstable father, a step dad who just felt like some impostor (at the time), and an emotionally distraught mother created a lot of chaos in our home(s). The older we got, the more intense the chaos got. Our home was a war zone every day. Until my mom finally left too.  My brother and I ended up living with our step dad in Orleans, Ottawa after my mom left and divorced him too. The environment still wasn't healthy though. There was a lot of tension because I strongly disliked my step dad. He creeped me out at the time, but I had no where else to go. Meanwhile my brother was able to get along with our step dad; which left me feeling a little betrayed and misunderstood.  I was able to forgive my father and started to build a bit of a relationship with him as a teenager; which made my brother angry, maybe even a bit jealous. He would say things like "How can you love him? Why don't you hate him?" I think I was able to forgive my father because I understand the struggle of depression and self medicating. My brother never had empathy though, so he couldn't forgive. This is probably what started to separate my brother and I; until we couldn't see eye to eye at all anymore. So I got more quiet around him to avoid saying something that could potentially make him angry. He can be scary when he's angry. It wasn't until recently that I realized being around my brother was like walking on eggshells. Which lead to him not even really knowing me anymore because I wasn't able to be my authentic self around him, due to the fear of making him angry. This I now realize was toxic too. I eventually moved to Quebec when I was around 23. That's when my relationship with my brother was just completely gone. I could go on with details, but end of the day, my brother turned into an angry, abusive, manipulative, deceiving, egocentric monster. When I was 26 my housing was at risk, so I had to go back to Orleans to live with my brother and step-dad. It only took a couple months before I saw the demons in my brother that he'd been hiding from me for so long.