Afterword

Brian Andrew Kellam. I’ve tried to determine in the years I’ve been writing about his life just what he means to me as an author and as a person. As a writer, Brian has represented me and my feelings in many ways. If one were to follow Brian’s emotional state through For the Love of Pete and Brian and Pete, it would closely mirror my own feelings at the time I wrote that particular chapter of the story. Brian’s feelings of worthlessness and self-doubt reflected the same feelings in my own thinking.

As Brian’s story continued and he began to understand that he did indeed have something to offer to others; that he was a special person in his own right and not as an extension of someone else, he taught me to understand those same things about myself. Where his life was once measured only by the depth of his depression, he now judges his life by other criteria, such as the joy Brian feels when he is with Pete, or the satisfaction he takes when he realizes just how far he has come from that twelve-year-old boy bent on self-destruction.

Adolescence is not only a time of physical maturation. The very way a child thinks is undergoing radical change. It has been proven that the brain structures of an adolescent and an adult are different. Nerve bundles in an adult are sheathed with a protective layer which a child’s brain lacks. When puberty strikes, the brain begins to grow this protective sheath which, scientists hypothesize, could partially account for the rapid, sometimes volatile changes in attitude and the impulsivity we associate with children during these difficult transitional years.

Adolescence is also a time of emotional change and maturation. Hormones give rise to the basic biological urge of procreation. This in turn drives humans to form bonds with others we find attractive. What hormones do not do is inform us how to deal with the emotions that go along with those relationships.

Something I’ve tried to bring out in For the Love of Pete, Brian’s Destruction and Brian and Pete is the incredible damage that today’s society inflicts on the psyche of children. Traditional gender roles, which have their basis in the very dawn of human evolution, are instilled in our young people even before they are capable of comprehending such things. Granted, some of these gender roles are born of biology and necessity, but even then we find exceptions to the rule. Stay-at-home fathers are a good example. All too often, however, gender roles become gender straightjackets, preventing the child from exploring his or her place in the world and determining for themselves what is right for them and their life. Boys are forced into the "macho" world and taught how to "be a man". Girls are taught how to "be a lady".

During adolescence, a strong need to belong and a need to be "normal" asserts itself. Like a shark turning on a wounded fellow, teens tend to attack anything that does not conform to the norm established by gender roles and current culture. Effeminate boys are ridiculed and sometimes driven to the point of suicide. Masculine girls face much the same type of abuse. The list of characteristics that can cause an individual to be singled out can vary from the obvious, such as being overweight, to the not-so-obvious, such as being emotionally vulnerable. A child who emits a single stray tear can suffer years and years of abuse from their classmates, as will a child who may not be as coordinated as their peers.

What are we to do? How do we change four hundred thousand years of evolutionary development? There is no answer. As a species, homo sapiens sapiens will be compelled to maintain these stereotypical roles by our very biology. However, there is a saying that is used by environmental advocates: "Think globally, act locally."

What are we to do? Make a difference one life at a time. While we as individuals are helpless to change the human race as a species, we as individuals can have a very powerful and profound impact on the life of a young person. We can teach them that they are unique and special in their own way. We can teach them to follow their heart and be their own person, to live their lives for themselves and whomever they will choose to spend their life with, and that no matter what they choose to do with their life, they are valued and loved. We must set the example for our young. We must guide them and show them how to live a happy, fulfilled life. We must fight our own past and move beyond it, to live our own lives to the fullest.

We owe it to our children to prepare ourselves for that task. To do less is a heinous crime, not only against the child, not only against humanity as a whole, but against our own person. We owe it to ourselves to be who we want to be; to be happy in the life we choose, for to help someone else we must also help ourselves.

Life is meant to be lived, so live life and teach our children to do the same. Make a difference, one person at a time.

Dwayne aka Dewey

March 6, 2004

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