We are injured and angry, scared and sad. Some families, like some couples, become toxic to each other after prolonged exposure.

Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.

It's true. somewhere inside us we are all the ages we have ever been. We're the 3 year old who got bit by the dog. We're the 6 year old our mother lost track of at the mall. We're the 10 year old who get tickled till we wet our pants. We're the 13 year old shy kid with zits. We're the 16 year old no one asked to the prom, and so on. We walk around in the bodies of adults until someone presses the right button and summons up one of those kids.

We all start out so damn sure, thinking we've got the world on a string. If we ever stopped to think about the infinite number of ways we could be undone, we'd never leave our bedrooms.

Fate already warned us to pack it in. We just didn’t hear it in time.

We are all smiling in the picture, three brothers having a grand old time just playing around in the living room, no agendas, no buried resentments or permanent scars. Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up.

I want to explain everything to him, show him that it’s really not as screwed up as it all sounds, but then I remember that it is.