I have a little brother 21 years younger than me. How that happened is a long story that I don't want to get into but let's just say some devastating things happened a long time ago. When my little brother's mother (he's really a half -brother) left my father I supported her and she promised never to take him out of my life.

Despite the promise I haven't seen him since he was 4 and haven't heard from her since he was 8. He just graduated from high school. I have been waiting for many years for him to be an adult and independent so that contacting him would be something that would be his own decision what he did with it. But then last month I discovered via facebook that he is going to college on the other side of the country and so I felt like I should do something before he moves and I can't find an address or way to contact him (everything I know comes from an open facebook account so it just takes increasing privacy settings and I'm back to the last 10 years of my life except for knowing a few things about him and having seen his picture and knowing he looks just like our father, yet when goofing off can make a face that is so much like my own when I'm being silly).

Earlier this week I mailed a gift card and graduation card to him. Just a brief congratulations note and a card with my email and phone on it. I figure it is up to him at that point to figure out what he wants to do and if his mother discourages him (which she has no reason to do; he knows that his father isn't his biological father, he might even remember me, and I have no contact with our father and haven't in 17 years). This is a really hard thing for me to have done because I'm just not in the strongest place emotionally right now but I did not want to miss my chance.

He should have gotten it by now. I feel so weird about the whole thing. One the one hand I know that if he never responds a)he's kinda rude b)he probably is confused and c) that's his choice. I never want to force myself on him.

My therapist thinks that it will all work out. I'm much less confident and if it does there are new hurdles that are too complicated to go into here. But I put my neck on the line and now I want to undo it because it's too scary. I hate that I may have used my one and only chance. I hate knowing that I might be hurt by this but I had to do it. And I hate the waiting.

I wish I knew how to just make up the last 14 years. I was a good big sister and he was a good kid. I wish I knew how to make it be like it was back then.

It's just making me sad. And I'm already sad from depression. And now I need to go finish sewing a dress that isn't going to fit my niece. (Long story, boring if you don't sew and probably stupid if you do).

But I can't stop thinking about this.