Selfish Love

I hate going to the grocery store. I can never find what I am looking for. I do not like the awkward cart traffic jams, and I despise speaking to anyone working. If met with the option of starving or asking a kind, helpful person for directions to the chip aisle, I would starve.

My brother, Carter, however, loves going to the grocery store. He finds it thrilling to look for fun new products; he will reliably push the cart, and when he gets to the checkout, he always will have the same line: “Hi! My name is Carter. I have two dogs. And this is my brother, Cade.” Carter suffers from Dravet Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy. This interaction at the register continues only one of two ways. The person will hesitantly respond, or they will say nothing at all. Both kill me. So, simply, someone can brighten another person’s day. Yet this outcome is seldom the case, so when it does happen, you feel almost sad that you appreciated something so simple so much.

I try to stop Carter from talking to the cashier. It makes me cringe every time. I am infamously dismissive of poor customer service. I am terrified of inconveniencing any person in the service industry. In my head, no one wants to be bothered at their job and me asking someone to do their job is bothering someone at their job. I am an utter pushover. So when my brother, wobbly and frail, goes to speak his slurred script, I try to stop him. It never works. Recently, my attempts to try and stop him have become more assertive because it makes me so sad to see him struggle to understand why he cannot get a response. My family always tries to help him, but no one knows what to do with him.

About a year ago, we had yet another grocery store interaction. Carter diligently recited his lines, and I did my best to help him. “He is saying his name is Carter.” Blank stare. My brother did his best to continue the conversation. Again nothing. I repeated myself. Still nothing. The cashier was a woman in her twenties. She had long, brown hair and kind eyes. I had seen her casually talking with other customers and employees and knew she could speak to my brother if she wanted to. She would not even look at him. A poor, skinny, fragile Carter did not get to look into her “kind” eyes.

I have many flaws. I have been unwilling to admit them for most of my life, but I am improving at allowing myself to be wrong. I am an intense person with a short temper. It has gotten me into trouble quite often. I can be hypocritical. I frequently become impatient with my brother; however, the angriest I ever get is when I feel someone has mistreated him. I explode. Today, thankfully, was not one of those occasions, but that interaction, just one of so very many, for some reason, made me so angry that I felt like my head was going to pop.

This anger is a different kind of anger. It was anger that, strangely, felt satisfying. It wasn’t as if the anger itself felt good, but rather that I knew that I would never feel remorse for the emotions that I was feeling. I didn’t want to have to feel angry, but when I did, I embraced it. That day, anger was something that I, as a person, needed to feel because it showed how much I cared about my brother. You experience anger often living in the Young household. You feel angry when Carter has a seizure playing backyard football because it is cruel that having too much fun is a trigger. It means your heart wants fairness. Your eyes swell with venomous tears when you see people mock him because your heart knows that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. You can feel your heart pounding when you realize that your little brother could be taken from you tomorrow because your heart wants everyone to be able to live a full, happy life. And you could put your fist through the Target cash register when people won’t talk to him because you know how much such a small thing matters. Walking out of that store, my anger was internal, but I let myself feel it.

On the ride home, I reflected on the interaction. I couldn’t understand why I was so angry about this specific interaction. I kept thinking: it would be easy for that woman to be kind to a special needs child. When thinking about what happened, the average person would say to themselves, “That’s just terrible. Of course, I would talk to him.” In reality, you might not. I live with Carter and often can’t understand him or lose my patience with him as one does with one’s family members sometimes. It is difficult to admit to myself and others, but it is true. Most people don’t go out of their way to make someone’s day brighter. Whether it be a special needs kid at the grocery store, someone you pass on the street, or even a friend. Why do we have such a hard time doing something so easy that significantly impacts others? We, as people, are very willing to talk about how wonderful the community we are a part of is, yet we do not often go out of our way to make it better.

Sitting in that car, I turned my questions into an internal dialogue with myself. I thought about all the times I would refuse to speak to new people or a server at a restaurant because I felt uncomfortable. Social anxiety is something I have struggled with. I have brought up some of my social anxieties with my friends, and they have laughed. There is no way that Cade Young could have social anxiety like that. I definitely do. It may not be the same anxieties that others have, but it is quite present in my life. I do not want others to feel some burden or feel uncomfortable because of me. There is no way for my friends to see that, though, because they cannot see within me. I thought about all the times others might have felt justifiably angry towards me. Despite that, I was angry at a Target cashier I realistically knew nothing about. I didn’t feel any regret about the anger, yet the fact that I felt angry created conflict within me. It is so easy to make someone’s day better, yet people don’t. However, we shouldn’t judge how people do things because we can’t see inside them either. How can an individual make the world a better place if they are not expected to do so?

The car ride that produced this line of thought was silent, and I struggled with these questions for the next several months. Carter and I still went to the grocery store, and people treated him poorly. I still got upset at those people, but I would have trouble going out of my way to speak to them and make small talk. It was so hypocritical of me. I do not know when it hit me, but I realized I was thinking about the problem incorrectly. I was thinking about others rather than myself. Why was I focusing on a grand abstract question of conflicting senses of human decency when the answer was right in front of me the entire time? I had to live like Carter.

Carter does not understand that people stare at him, laugh at him, or find him disgusting. All Carter wants to do is tell people about his two white, fluffy dogs that he loves. Carter does not bring joy into a room because he cares about how other people feel. This is not to say that Carter does not want those around them to feel love. Instead, Carter brings joy into a room because he wants to feel that goodness regardless of other people’s thoughts or judgments. It feels good to do good. His lack of understanding of what others may think makes Carter so free, so happy, and so very good. When I, his older brother, tried to stop him from speaking to other people, I thought I was saving him some pain. I was not. Carter does not care whether or not a cashier cares that he has a brother named Cade. All Carter cares about is the opportunity to share something he cares about with others.