After reading Flowers for Algernon, I feel myself examining how i truly feel about Yong Li.

Have I truly seen him as a person? Or is he merely another presence in my life, unknown and disregarded? Is he an afterthought, without his own character to distinguish him as worthy of attention?

Perhaps i'm being too hard on myself, but i find that i have never truly thought about how he might feel, always assumed that i treat him well.

I feel so many emotions, whenever i think about why things have happened the way they do, i feel like crying, like raging why! and trying to convince myself that God intended this to make us learn something. It is unfair, and it hurts because i cannot bring myself to see him as a person. Knowing that he needs love and attention, i have to admit that selfish emotions boil up, an instinctive reaction in me that i know he does not deserve.

How am I supposed to feel? Pity? Love? Despair? Hate? Reluctance? Anger?

Everyday I am faced with all these, and I am determinedly trying to ignore and suppress and hide these behind a wall of obliviousness and guilt. I have never tried to understand, because i hate not being able to resolve it and move on. There is NOTHING to resolve, except my steadfast denial and neglect of a brother that does not announce his presence by asserting himself. In some ways he is most worthy of love, because he does not ever place expectations, accepts me as the way i am, and never demand that i apologize for the things i do not do for him, for all the time that I dont think of him.

It is not Love, but Need.

Perhaps that is why i resent him sometimes, because I know that I will, forever, be the one who will give more than i can receive. But that is not true. It is unfair and undeserving to think that, because in his closed world we might mean more to him than we think. Might. God, I hate uncertainties, but it is always an unopened Pandora's box with Yong Li.

Perhaps it is time that i looked beyond my own selfishness. It is difficult to be accepting, unreserved love requires as much, if not more effort than it sounds. But i think it's time i stopped running, stopped to see and allow myself to feel. There are so many parts of Yong Li that I love, so much that i have to find out. I might not like what i find, about him as well as about myself, but it's a start. Ignorance is not an excuse, it is cowardice, of fearing to reach out and understand.

And maybe then i'll find hope at the bottom of the box.