Born to Run

The first in a series on The Brother Wound

I am dreaming about my older brother again. And that is not a good thing.

He is molesting me in my dreams. I wake up feeling dirty and disoriented. Like there is a filth on me I can not wash off. As a depth psychologist, there is a lot to say about these dreams. But as a sister, it has been hard to find the words.

So let me start at the beginning. The actual beginning.

My name is Arrowyn. My brother’s name is Strider. Both from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Mine taken from Lady Arwen, of immortal Elven lineage, who surrendered that immortality for the love of Aragorn - the once and future king the hobbits called Strider, for his long, restless stride. And Lady Eowyn, the shield maiden who loved him too, silently and without return, before she went to war and killed the one thing everyone said couldn’t be killed, the Witch-king of Angmar. No pressure. The fusion creates Arrowyn. Two women. One man. Both women are my namesakes, both in orbit around the same gravitational center. I was born into a myth. I remember seeing the movies and feeling uncomfortable with the love story between Arwen and Aragorn. It didn’t sit well with me. It would take me decades to understand why.

Our father loved those books. Supposedly he loved Strider too. Me, he was never too sure about. He loved alcohol the most though. A raging alcoholic, they were on different forms of birth control when my mother became pregnant with me. One-percent baby, they were not expecting me. I was initially unwanted. But I persevered. Mom used to tell me that if I had the will to be born under those circumstances, I had the will to do anything. That tracks.

Disruptor was my archetype before inception.

Circumstances surrounding my birth were catastrophic for not only our mother, but for my brother and myself. Mom followed Dad to Algiers, Africa, pregnant with me, towing Strider as a toddler. Our father was a geological surveyor on contract there. When it was time to give birth it was clear that Algiers was not the best option, so she flew to Palma de Mallorca and had me in Spain. It sounds exotic and glamorous, and I truly wish it was. The truth is much more devastating. Mom was alone. Dad was too drunk to be of help. She had to leave Strider in a German daycare where they did not speak English so she could give birth in a hospital. She assumed our father would pick him up at the end of the day.

He never did.

When closing came and no one came for him, Strider, almost two years old, was abandoned for five nights and days with complete strangers and our Mom was helpless to do anything about it. I can’t even imagine. It hurts to think about. This story matters. Gravely.

Meanwhile, in labor in the hospital, our mother did not understand the language and thought she was getting an epidural when they instead gave her twilight sleep. Forceps. The early seventies. You get it. She was not entirely present for my arrival, and when she was finally introduced to me, days later - this dark baby, deep dark brown hair and brown eyes, when our father was blonde and blue eyed - she questioned, for a moment, whether I was hers. I remember fantasizing as a child that I was a Spanish princess switched by some nefarious nurse in the hospital. It would explain why I always felt like I didn’t belong in my family of origin. But she and I look far too much alike for that to ever be true.

It took a few months to get my passport and return to Salt Lake City, Utah, where my Mormon parents were from. By the time I was six months old, our father was gone. Or she left him. Depends on who you are asking.

At a clothing store in Salt Lake City, Mom met the owner Kenny, who would soon become my stepfather. He always liked to say that the only reason he asked her out was because I was such a cute baby. I love this story. He told it to me for the last time before he passed away from a brain tumor during Covid. He was a good man.

Kenny was our ticket out of Utah and into California. We began in Sausalito, then Long Beach, before landing in an old Spanish style house in Dana Point, one of the first ever built. It was haunted as fuck and I was the target. But that is another story.

I like to joke that my little brother is lucky he had a different father, because his name is Dusty instead of Gollum or Bilbo. Although he would have made an amazing Samwise. He is the youngest of us three and yet he should have been the oldest. His nickname in high school was Grandpa.

Dusty was born at home when I was five and Strider was seven. I have fond memories of living in Dana Point. It was the late seventies. Kenny smoked a lot of pot. Strider and I were comrades in adventure. We used to run around naked, streaking the neighborhood till cops brought us home. Run away for a few hours to the local grocery store and steal cupcake toppings to eat under the boardwalk. Bonded in an otherworldly, inexplicable way. We finished each other’s sentences. We watched soap operas religiously. The Young and the Restless was our favorite. He was the only person who laughed at all my jokes.

There is a black and white photo of him as a child that haunts me. He is sitting with his back against a giant tree, six or seven years old, knees bent toward his chest like armor, pouring sand through his hands. A profound sense of loneliness permeates this photo. It is not only that he is alone - there is a sadness to his isolation that makes me cry every time I see it. I want to rush in, hug him, and tell him it will all be okay.

Except it won’t. So I would be lying.

Even though I was the younger sister, I somehow knew Strider was my responsibility, whether I wanted it or not. He had a fragility to him. A profound sensitivity that caused him great suffering. As if he was experiencing being human for the first time and was completely overwhelmed by it.

LEAVE MY BROTHER ALONE, GODDAMMIT!

I am five years old standing in front of a giant bush, hands on hips, screaming at a group of confused teenagers walking across the street. Alone. Except I am not alone. My older brother is hiding in the bushes behind me. Only the teenagers don’t know that. They can’t see him. Our mother can. She heard me yelling and peeked outside to see why. Most likely Strider and I were walking down the street to the local liquor store where we liked to buy candy, and although Strider is twenty-one months older than me, he is as skittish as a feral cat. He saw a group of older kids and immediately dove into the bushes. I responded in the only way I knew how.

By protecting him.

We always knew we were different from Dusty. He knew his Dad. His Dad didn’t leave. Didn’t abandon him. Even after Mom left Kenny when I was nine, Strider was eleven, Dusty was four, and moved us from Dana Point to Laguna Beach, his father still showed up for him. So why did ours abandon us? It’s a tough question to sit with as a kid.

The Father Wound. Cuts deep.

Before Laguna Beach we had what felt like a semblance of a family. Even if he wasn’t our biological father, Kenny was the only dad we knew. We took his last name. Called him Dad. There was talk of him officially adopting us. We had financial security. All that changed when she left him.

Laguna Beach with its opulent wealth was a tough crowd for two kids with little money and hand-me-down clothes. But we had each other. In the house on Dunning Drive, we became feral. Mom was gone a lot. She had to work and attend Native American ceremonies in Los Angeles co-opted by white men with names like Harley Swift Dear.

Left to our own devices, Dusty mostly at his Dad’s on weekends, Strider and I lived like heathens. We climbed the walls, explored the canyon, ate a lot of popcorn and apples, while terrorizing neighborhood kids. On nights we had Dusty with us, we’d build a giant living room fort where I’d tuck all three of us in on Mom’s late LA nights - snuggled together like three little peas in a pod. We’d walk to my best friend’s house every morning to catch the bus to elementary school. Jessy would brush my ratty hair and feed me cereal. Her Dad once asked me if I wanted bananas in mine. The question overwhelmed me.

I did not know I had a choice.

Kenny had a temper. Especially when he was not stoned. Without the constant threat of an unpredictable outburst, we became unhinged in the best possible way. It was like being released from captivity. Liberated. These were the good old days. Sadly, they were short lived.

Three months later, Bob appeared.

Bob was a young landscape architect in town who fell madly in love with our Mom. Theirs was a passionate, lustful, fiery romance. You know the kind. Careening like an out of control freight train about to jump the tracks.

The first time we met Bob he gave Strider a pair of boxing gloves to play with. We were sitting on my canopy bed with the Holly Hobby comforter. Strider and I often hit each other. This was something we did for fun, to relieve boredom. We’d give each other “knuckle sandwiches” to see who could hit the hardest. Bob did not know this. But that is no excuse for what happened next.

With Bob sitting beside us, Strider hits me so hard in the arm that I fall off the bed. I’m laughing but when I look up, to my horror, I watch as Bob takes the other glove, puts it on, and swings at Strider’s face. Everything is in slow motion. He is a grown man. Strider is a scrawny eleven year old boy. The glove connects with Strider’s face with a dull thud as his head whips uncontrollably to the side. I freeze. I do not know what to do.

The look on Strider’s face says it all. A mixture of shock and confusion but also something new, something I have never seen before, terror. He is trying desperately not to cry. To be tough. But I know in my bones how scared he is. We are afraid of Bob in a way we were never afraid of Kenny. Kenny had a loud bark. But Bob, he had a bite. And he just showed us he was not afraid to use it.

Remember that kid sitting under the tree? That is my brother again. Except there is no bush to hide in this time. And I cannot protect him from this. This monster is too big for me. I am only a little girl. This monster is not made up. This monster is real. Very. Very. Real.

There was a before Bob. And a distinct after.

Something shifts in Strider. Something turns.

He begins destroying my dollhouse. Methodically. Repeatedly. Ripping the heads off the dolls and leaving them for me to find. He shaves my beloved stuffed animals. Burns hate symbols into my one Barbie’s face. One afternoon while I am at school he opens the cage and sets my two parakeets free. Just opens the door and watches them go. I come home to an empty cage and say nothing. What is there to say.

We are no longer wild and free. We are walking on eggshells in a house that has become a minefield, hypervigilant, waiting for the next explosion, the next bite.

This is when he starts running.

I can see him now, sprinting away from me down Dunning Drive. An overcast day. Ivy climbing the hillside. The canyon flanking his left - the same canyon we used to explore together. Always together. But now he is leaving me, alone with the monster, in his oversized white button-up shirt billowing behind him, and all I can do is watch him disappear and whisper, take me with you.

Tall, lean, and lanky.

The hobbits didn’t call him Strider for nothing.

He was born to run.

I just never thought he would run away from me.