I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [76]
First of all, take a look at your family and think about what you can celebrate there. There may be a whole lot of negative stuff going on at home, but think about who you love there, and what you have learned in your life. Personally, I know that I have been so blessed in my life because, while some people pray for just one family to love, I have been given two. The Tuohys made me a part of their home, but my biological siblings are a part of my life as well.
My sisters and younger brothers never did end up coming back home from foster care; one of my little sisters, who was born while I was in middle school, was adopted by her father's family and enjoys a nice life with them now. But it is sad that our mother's choices ended up tearing our family apart so that I barely know some of my own family now.
Denise has her own apartment and job, and I am really proud her. I hadn't seen her since the day she was loaded into the car back in 1993, but we finally met up in 2009--it was great to see her after more than fifteen years. She is tall, like our mother and me, which for some reason made me really happy--I guess it's just knowing that we share something.
We older Oher boys have remained in pretty close contact with one another, and I've been able to enjoy having them as part of my life. One or another of my brothers always tried to make it to my football games in high school, and some of them even made it to a couple of my college games. Marcus, as I mentioned, was with me on draft day, which was really special, too.
My junior year of college, Deljuan was killed when the car he was riding in with Marcus and Rico hit a pole. That was really tough to go through; I left classes for a few days to go home for the funeral and cry together as a family. It was so hard to lose someone who had been such a huge part of my life. I always kind of thought of my big brothers as one big unit that no one could hurt or break up, even if we were living in different places. Of course, as kids we had to fend for ourselves a lot, but their love was always important to me, and even now I am proud of how we tried to stick together. Now Carlos is a dad and Marcus, too--he's married and has a little house in Memphis.
When I got my first paycheck from the Ravens, I gave each of my brothers a little bit of money--just enough to buy a reliable used car to get them to and from work. I wanted them to know that it was important to me that they have a way of supporting themselves. I also took them shopping to get some work clothes, but my mother got ahold of it all and sold whatever she could as soon as I was out of town.
She called me later and left a message on my voice mail calling me some really terrible names for taking them shopping and not her. I must have listened to that message a hundred times, and each listen hurt as much as the first one. When I tried to talk to her about it, she yelled at me, "You've got to answer to God."
"No, you've got to answer to God," I finally said to her. "I'm just trying to do right by my brothers."
I will always love my family--my siblings and my mother--and we have been through a whole lot together. But that doesn't mean that I need to keep negative people in my life. My biological mother has shown me time and again through her poor decisions that she values certain things more than she values her relationship with her children. I've tried to put her in rehab, I've tried to help her however I could, but I have finally realized the sad truth--that she and I really don't have a relationship anymore. When I was sixteen, she started back into her old ways after being clean for a couple of years. I've talked to her since then, but I haven't had a real conversation with her. We have nothing to talk about. The choices we have