Sacrifice

You gotta be willing. Willing to sacrifice who you are… For what you will become.

“Matt, dinners ready…” Sarah said, standing at the wooden door to her brother’s room that always seemed to be closed. The thin light shining underneath the door and the constant clacking alongside the occasional sound of music were the only signs of life coming from inside.

“Yeah, I’m coming… Just finishing up some work on this chapter.” Came Matt’s voice from inside.

Sarah stood at the door a moment longer, he was always working, always starting, or finishing something. Nothing he did had come to fruition though. As much as he wrote it seemed to be pointless, he wrote and wrote and wrote but she didn’t see any agents or publishing directors knocking on his door.

Sarah turned and walked back into the kitchen, they had a large table, plenty of space for the guests that never came, much less the family. Standing in the kitchen Sarah saw the pictures on the side of the fridge, held up by ancient alphabet magnets.

Matt used to be so full of life, the two of them used to play outside, they used to spend time with each other. Matt used to be her brother but he didn’t seem to be that now. He just wrote. He typed up his stories trying to make something out of them but did it matter? What were the odds of him making it anyway? As much as Sarah wanted to support him she didn’t know how… She’d lost faith in him a long time ago. Deep inside she wanted to believe, God knows she did, but she didn’t know how anymore.

It had become the same thing day after day. He comes home, he goes to his room, and he writes. Even his friends had seemed to stray away from him, they didn’t call or come over… Not like they used to.

“So what do we got for dinner?” Matt asked shuffling in, wearing his pajama pants, his hair a mess.

“Ramen noodles, chicken flavor of course, and saltines. Also warmed up some of that pizza from yesterday if you want some.”

“Sweet,” Matt said, looking closer, Sarah saw dark circles under his eyes, realized the shirt he was wearing had been the same one she’d seen him in the last four days straight. He grabbed a piece of pizza from the fridge and balanced it over his bowl of noodles and headed back off to his bedroom.

“Where are you going?” Sarah asked sitting down at the table. She’d hoped that once, just once her brother would sit down and eat with her.

“Just headed to my room you know,” He said smiling “If I can just finish this chapter I’ll be so close to finishing. Second draft you know, this is the one that gets sent to the editor. Then once she gets it back to me I’ll probably write a third draft and then we can send it off and-“

“Then what?” Sarah asked throwing her fork onto the table. Tears welling up in her eyes. “then what, Matt that’s all you do is work on that stupid book!” She’d had enough, she loved her brother but the person standing in front of her was not him. How hard was it, to sit down at a table and eat a meal once in a while, how hard could it possibly be, to maybe drive to the store and talk about how he didn’t approve of her boyfriend or something!

“Look I get it, I know I’ve been working on it a long time, but it’s-“ Matt said, his face falling and his eyes projecting confusion.

“You don’t do anything…” Sarah said her voice cracking. “You don’t talk to us, you don’t talk to your friends, and you can’t even eat food at the table because that book is consuming your life. I wanted a normal family, not a ghost in my brother’s place! I want you to stop! I want you to stop, you have to STOP!” Sarah was crying now, she pushed the bowl of noodles out from in front of her, flipping it off the table and spilling soup everywhere.

Matt stood there in quiet for a moment. Holding back his own tears because he knew she wouldn’t get it. With shaking hands he sat his bowl down and walked over to her. Sarah, his sister sat there crying at the table because he was gone. He wasn’t the person he used to be and she didn’t like the guy he was.

“You know what my dream is?” Matt asked softly, pulling out a chair and sitting down next to her. He wouldn’t have been able to stand much longer, his whole body shaking. “I wanna be a writer, always have.” He paused for a moment, thinking about his next words carefully. “You know, following your dreams isn’t what they make it out to be…” He said. “In the movies it’s just a montage of classy music and workout scenes, but in real life it’s nothing but sacrifice.”

“It was five, maybe six years ago…” Matt continued “Mom was at the grocery store, and I walked across the street, I was headed to this book shop and… This man, he stopped me.”

Sarah wiped at her eyes and looked over at her brother, it was the first time they’d had a personal conversation in as long as she could remember.

“I don’t know what prompted him to ask, but the man looks at me an says ‘What are you supposed to be kid?’ and standing in the front of that bookstore with a pen in my hand, and that one button up that I always used to wear, you know, the one with the elbow patches?”

“Yeah,” Sarah said, remembering the old times “You wore it a lot, made you look like an old man but you loved it.”

“I like it cause it made me feel like a writer, and in that moment, that guy asking me who, asking me WHAT I was, I told him ‘I’m a writer sir.’ That was when he told me there wasn’t any money in writing, and we talked about it but he got all upset, and I found out that, that man used to have dreams too. The only problem was he’d given up. The next thing he knew he was a homeless person, with nothing going for him and he was angry at dreams, he wasn’t angry at me he was angry at himself.”

“Why are you telling me this…?” Sarah asked trying to compose herself. Matt leaned back in the chair and let out a deep breath.

“When I remember that guy, all I can think about… Is what might happen if I give up? What happens if I can’t finish that book before I graduate, because I feel if I don’t finish that book now it’s never going to get done and if it doesn’t get done then I’m a walking shell… Writing is everything to me and I’m doing everything I can to make it happen… To make that dream a reality, but what that man showed me is what happens if I fail…”

“Matt… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…”

“No,” Matt said reassuring her, “It’s alright, you have every reason to be upset, you’re right, I’ve locked myself in that room and it’s tough. I can see it’s tough to sit out here and see me in there, see me drift away. You know, I heard this guy on a video one day and I can’t get what he said out of my head, he said ‘You gotta be willing. Willing to sacrifice who you are, for what you will become’.”

Sarah looked down at the floor. So that’s what it was all about… The reason he was so focused on his book, his world is because he was doing his very best to follow his dreams but it wasn’t easy. He’d had to sacrifice, but not just sacrifice his time he’d had to set aside his own family and friends to pursue what he was after. Sarah could see in his eyes that as hard as it was for her to not have her brother, it was a thousand times harder for him to make the decision that he had made.

“I admire that.” She said finally after some silence. “Makes me want to find something in my life that I want to pursue.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry,” Matt said “I’m really sorry about how things have been but I’m writing just as much for you as for me. When this thing goes off, when my dreams are achieved the time we could spend together the food we could eat, it’s just that right now. This dream has to happen and it feels like there’s a boulder on my chest. I’m sorry…”

Sarah leaned over and hugged matt, hugged, her brother.

“It’s alright.” She said clutching him tight. “I believe you’re doing the right thing, and I, I want you to know that I believe in you.”

“Thanks,” Matt said “I don’t know what I am right now, but I will be somebody that you’ll be proud of. Somebody that everybody will be proud of and on that day I’m gonna sit down, and have a bunch of seats next to me. Seats for those who believed in me. It’ll show those who believed and that it’s those people who got me that far.”

Sarah smiled and stood up.

“Well do me one favor then.” She said “Save one of those seats for me.”