That was the start of what I consider to be a mistake. To listen to one side and ignore the other. To hold an irrational grudge based off how the “cover of the book” looked. But such hate couldn’t be any more fueled than the day where I learned that I had a younger stepbrother. So I thought; “How? I mean, how could it be that he couldn’t have told me directly, rather than for me to learn about it through my mother?” The more I thought about it, the more negativity I invited to poison my perception of my father. It was a naive move from me. All it did was reduce my intelligence. I had no regard for a logical and fair technique to approach this situation; I just let hatred overcome me. He knew where I lived and how I was doing. His company had been growing exponentially in success. He even created another child. Yet he was unable to even financially compensate for leaving us; the least that he could do for all the damage he caused. Because of that, my mother had to sacrifice some time with her children for a promotion, for a raise; for an extra climb up the corporate ladder in order to make us--my brother, my grandparents, and myself--”happy”. So not only did I miss out on having a father-figure, I lost a bit of what it’s like to have a mother that’s always present when I needed one.

    And for all that time that I had to amass all that anger, I simply rejected any attempt for him to make contact with me. I denied phone calls when my mother handed me her phone when he called, or simply spoke as little as possible when she forced me to talk to him. If a child could disown a parent, it was what my younger self wanted to do. My last name--Shimabukuro-Sanchez--felt like it had a cancer attached to it; that cancer being “-Sanchez”. To think that I wanted to remove the hyphenated part of my name was such a ludicrous idea, but as a kid, I did whatever I could to believe what I wanted to believe. I started shortening my name to “Coby Shimabukuro” on school assignments. When my elementary teachers asked why, I told them an excuse; that it was too long to write out in full. Today, I use it as a legitimate excuse in the educational scene; that it’s too long; though, my reasons back then were clearly not backed with intelligent and rational reasoning.

    Knowing that I couldn’t really hold out for this long (as I would always break down when it came to deep discussion about my father with my mother, I had a plan to finally point that hatred somewhere; towards my stepbrother. At first, I thought meeting this child would just be a way of disrespect towards me; it would seem as if my father was telling me “Haha, look how well he turned out compared to you!” But after contemplating for a very long while, I decided to put that plan into action. To believe that this scheme of mines would work; to make it seem as if I was giving this stepbrother of mine a chance, when really I was going to vent out everything; nothing held back or filtered into appropriate language. To be honest, kids can be evil. I kind of was, in that very moment. So I decided to meet this child. He may not understand anything that I was going to tell him, but I know that any child could understand emotion. Rage. But when I met him, all of that infuriating emotion that I had for my dad’s side of the family simply ceased to exist in that moment. It was just a sudden realization of how my anger would simply be a displeasure for him, and would have damaged the relationship that he and his father had so far. I realized that this grudge that I’ve held for so long; it was stupid. So irritation wasn’t an emotion I wanted to have on my face as this young step brother of mine met me for the first time. I simply interacted with him, like an older brother. All that I showed him was the enjoyable side of me. No spite, no malicious remarks; just sibling to sibling interaction. What’s funny is that me being there inadvertently gave him a kind of “chance”. And he certainly delivered on using that chance that I have him, in a way.

    In retrospect, I knew that I still had to talk to my father about everything that’s happened and why he wasn’t involved. Though the reasons he had weren’t entirely justifiable, it was understandable. It made me realize that although all that hate can easily cloud one’s judgement, both sides have to be looked at and given a fair chance before any real conclusion can be drawn. Yes; I still had some anger for him, but that child and his current state of obliviousness made me despise the use of hatred to motivate myself. Not only would it have made it harder to move forward, it simply wouldn’t have enabled me to transition out of my adolescent mindset. The kid should know, eventually. When he has matured, I know that both me and my father will talk to him about why I don’t live with him, yet I’m his brother, and all of the other complications that a child of his age wouldn’t be able to comprehend. For now though, I have to show to him, as an older brother that he looks up to, that clinging on to one’s ideals and refusing to change in face of contradicting, irrefutable evidence isn’t fortitude; it’s illogical radicalism.