Broken, Flawed & Living (Discontinued)

Chapter Fifteen

"He's so cool."

The more I understood Cognitive Psychology, the clearer the picture came to solving Christian's mental illness. For lack of a better word, that is. His mind, the events that took place shaping how his mental growth progressed came a bit easier as I continued reading on in my textbook. It brought an outline of human intelligence, his, and how he thought of the world of himself, of anything really.

Watching him run around with a small, red blanket around his neck, as if a cape, brought quite a delight to my lips. And to our dad who stressed himself out way too much doing paperwork and bills at the other end of the dinner table. Mom would help if she wasn't working a case right now – being a lawyer and all. So being an architect left more room for personal endeavors such as this.

It pained me knowing the economic struggles we had back in Arizona and I promised myself now that were here, in Clarence, that I'd do anything to repay back the strength my parents had kept them and their three children afloat for so long. Getting me through high school and into College – though I vowed for part of a stake in the latter.

Every time I offered, "I can get a job, you know," like I used to. He kept on replying with, "No. It's not worth it for my son to work a 9-5 hob when he can get and education and actually put it to good use here. That will pay us off." They're lucky now they have jobs they enjoyed and rather me not find one for the sake of money or to pay them off. They wanted me to be a successful Psychologist and maybe because I worked one too many hours and hit overtime when I used to work.

Don't blame the ones who scheduled me, I just did what I needed to do in order to feel financially stable throughout my College years and be able to repay my family with gifts for the holidays or their birthdays I'd always make from scratch. Though I still do that nowadays, it was nice every once in a while that I bought them something nice.

"You're a super boy, Christian!" Then my eyes peered to Dallas, an eight year old girl who far surpassed her little brother's mental growth. She knew, too, for a girl her age. And to always include him in anything with her friends was always heartwarming.

The comparison between their mental progressing was ridiculous and even through a tough search through family tress on both my parents' side, we couldn't understand how Christian came down to it. The worry was far less, however, since it never affected his health as a whole, just how his mind aged. So you could guess by the time he reached high school, he'd have the mentality of that of probably a ten year old, six years his physical age.

It was just a year ago, when he was five, when he first spoke. The strange thing about it was that it was like, five years' worth of a normal child growth happened in a span of a year. Sounds out there, sounds unrealistic for a child to grow like that, to not have spoken until he was five and form complete sentences till his sixth birthday. Then to have him walk at four and yet understand good and bad and emotions.

That puzzled me far more. It made all that I've said earlier irrelevant and that made no sense. Still I felt close to understanding even a fraction of it.

It was like, his mind progressed at a slower rate and yet bam, in just some spur of the moment it kicked in and accelerated a few years. Then it stopped and a slow burn again. Like what? Part of the reason for going into Psychology, a part from what I said, was that understanding my brother's mentality was very important. A vital reason. I loved him so much and understanding one part of it left me confused with another.

This was honestly the best way to describe it, how I described it to myself. Why did Psychology have to be so damn complicated and way more perplexed? This was why I'd fail. I was so sure of it. Having an educated boyfriend in said field would've have helped me – knowing all the distractions that might come forth in our relationship.