Sitting in the front seat of an old, rusted-out pinto, I presented a Necco wafer to my brother saying, “This is the Body of Christ.” We also found an old mass booklet in the glove compartment from which I read to him with a priest’s authority. We were holding Catholic mass. It was 1985 and the pinto was one of the many cars that littered my grandfather's junkyard which also happened to be our backyard. We were often left to play among the abandoned cars, broken 1950s refrigerators, old washers, dryers, tangled hoses, mangled metal and threadbare tires. We navigated this maze with a sense of adventure—each car, each machine was like its own little treasure island. It would be years before we became self-aware of the treachery of playing among the debris or of the shame of living in a junkyard. Instead, I was worried that day that we were going to hell. Sister Gloria had just taught our class that not going to mass on Sundays was a mortal sin, a sin for which one went to hell. I returned home sick with worry and begged my mother to take us to church. “Going to church,”she said as she took a long drag on her cigarette, “was the least of our concerns.” Since I couldn’t get her to comprehend the gravity of our situation or take us to church, I hoped that with a little bit of improvisation, I could save our own souls. I could act the part of the priest, my brother the communicant, the candy our host and the pinto our church. This type of improvising is something I would rely on for years and in many situations; it was a dubious business but it was only ever unsatisfactory in retrospect. It seems I’ve been trying to save souls for a very long time. I repeatedly fought with my mother (as much as she could be fought with for it’s always an unequal battle between the abused and the abuser) throughout my adolescence and then adulthood telling her that I was worried, something was wrong with my brother…She would get really defensive and call me a judgmental snob—that he was just choosing a different lifestyle—a life “off the grid” or that I was delusional and paranoid imagining catastrophes where none existed. I called our disconnected, on-again-off-again father hoping he could help me but his voice would drift off with a twinge of distaste whenever I expressed my concerns about my brother…it seemed like he thought I was stirring up trouble where none needed to be made or at least where he certainly didn’t need to acknowledge. I talked to my aunt, grandmother, and anyone I thought could offer some insight about what I was seeing--an increasingly troubled and sick brother who needed help. Finally, I went directly to him and told him how much I was worried about him and that I wanted to help. He insisted that there really wasn’t anything wrong but that he could really use some help getting his finances back in order, getting his license re-instated, his back child support paid off, and straighten out some debt that the IRS was after him for…So, I thought those are some pretty deep holes that could hold anyone back…maybe if I dug him out, he could make a new start. I paid off the child support, his license fee, helped him go through the process of re-instatement, and took care of some smaller bills. I also went grocery shopping for him and included a gift card for more when those ran out. We then mapped out a plan of action on how to deal with the IRS…he promised me that he would follow-through. Flash forward 6 months, and he was slowly going back into the same hole of debt…he didn’t make any payments after we paid off his existing debt. My husband and I hired him to come do some painting and yard work which he never finished. In fact, I was baffled by the fact that he barely started some projects. One night he could only manage to paint one baseboard before needing to head home. When he returned months later, I had finished that painting job and he never brought it up. He just rushed through another half-finished projected and asked for the cash up front. I was not upset with him about any of the money he took or the projects that he left undone, but I was scared and desperately afraid….I knew that something was profoundly wrong. And instead of the many other emotions I could have felt, it was guilt that tore a hole through me. I started to do a “life review” of our lives as children…I was trying to think about what went wrong—why I couldn’t seem to help him….what had I done to him? I couldn’t stop cycling through the abuse we both suffered at the hands of our mother, the violent, chaotic, and neglectful upbringing we lived…about how we viciously fought with one another, how I would swear and wield a knife around like we had seen my mother often do, how I couldn’t shower with my eyes closed, or how I slept with knives and scissors under my mattress and pillow or about how out of nowhere, seemingly out of the blue I could physically feel, smell and see the abuse happening over and over again…I also thought about the many times I “escaped” our home to sleep at a best friend’s house, to go to college, to volunteer in the Peace Corps, to get married and start a family and how I just left him behind, left him to the same sad, scary memories where they actually happened. I spiraled into the deepest depression of my life. For about nine months, i existed in a pattern of crying, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and devastation before I finally broke down and went for help. Within two months, I was diagnosed with anxiety then PTSD then depression….upon getting the PTSD diagnosis, I vowed that I would take my life rather than disclose all of my abuse or admit that something so heavy, scary, and complex was what I was grappling with—How could I have managed to live almost 40 years without knowing that I carried these labels? Or, how could I have achieved so many things while suffering from so many mental illnesses? Why am I still suffering now when I am out of my abusive home and am living as a married adult with children in a situation where I have traveled very far from the junkyard to the American dream? Shortly after being diagnosed, I began to drink nightly, heavily, alone…I lost 20 pounds and stopped eating or sleeping. It seemed like heavy doses of vodka along with low weight and some antidepressants could help me achieve my goal of not waking up in the morning—something I desperately wished for but was too scared to deliberately enact. My treatment team intervened strongly and I received a couple new diagnoses—alcohol dependence and an eating disorder. Now, they are urging me to get my alcohol use under control…but I feel too tired, too weak, and too stubbornly stuck to wanting to kill myself to really dedicate myself to long-term abstinence. I feel uniquely FUCKED, and alone, and hopeless….I also feel like I cannot fully articulate this to my therapist someone who has done everything to help me. She has been a momentary source of solace and hope throughout all of this…for one hour per week, I feel a little better, a little less alone. My appetite returns after our sessions and I am able to enjoy blueberry pancakes with syrup...it only tastes good momentarily. I think to myself, “She has experienced pain and is working through it….maybe I can too.” She is someone I have grown to deeply admire and I feel tremendous guilt that I am letting her down by not getting better, by not investing 100% in my treatment, by countering her advice with reasons why it may not apply to me (perhaps, I am worse off than most others)….I think I should step away from her so that I don’t burn her out or make her question her effectiveness…I’m afraid of hurting her in addition to the others I am letting down—my own family and children. I’m also afraid that she’ll grow to hate me, despise me for such flagrant and provocative self-destruction. I think about the number one rule given to lifeguards, “Do not make it a double drowning.” When saving a drowning person, they may latch onto you and drown you as well….Lifeguards are advised to swim downwards until the drowning swimmer releases them and they can swim away. If this does not work, they are to strike them upon the nose or use any other means of force to separate. I want to tell her, shout to her don’t you know that I am drowning? Shouldn’t you be practicing these lifeguarding skills? At the same time, I am mute with warnings because I’m too afraid to let her know that I’m drowning in case she takes that very wise advice and decides to leave me there alone, at the bottom of the lake. I also worry she may already doing so and I cannot blame her.
It has now been 53 days since I last made contact with my brother.
We found out in November of 2015 that he had been abusing prescription opioids which then turned into herion use for the last 4 years. His admission was like a punch to the gut—and it coincided with the highest point of my treatment in the fall...all the signs of his drug abuse were there… but still, another part of me wanted to believe that his looking like a bag of bones, deteriorating health (he had MRSA infections a couple of times from which he came dangerously close to becoming septic and dying, he had horrible scabs and open sores on his face), his strange, evasive behavior (he wore long sleeve pants and shirts in ninety degree weather and fell asleep on the couch at every family holiday or gathering), and inability to pay any and all bills (he was running an electric extension cord from his apartment to another, he had no car, no food, stopped paying his child support) was because of some other, unknown factor…something less lethal. I went into overdrive when we finally got confirmation that he was doing heroin. I researched treatment places, I consulted addiction specialists, I attended support group meetings…I fielded calls, I made calls, I was ready to go back in to the burning building….I had a second chance to perform the heroic, instead of the cowardly act of leaving like I had done in the past….I had always admired the lore of Pony boy in The Outsiders when he saves the children from the burning church. When I drove him to his first appointment at a local treatment clinic he talked about the abuse we had experienced as children…about how he remembered trying really hard as a child….to be good, to do well in school, to play sports….but that it was never enough, never okay and as the obstacles grew and the abuse increased he said he consciously decided to give up. He told me how he repeatedly tried to explain the abuse and these feelings to his girlfriend but that he always felt a sense that it didn’t come out right, like it sounded trite…not a big deal…something he was overreacting to…he felt alone with his own bad memories. Then as if almost to himself, he spoke about hiding under our covers as our mother whacked us all over with a wooden spoon…I had forgotten about this one…and it certainly isn’t even close to the worst story we could share…but it brought back that sense of terror…of not knowing what she was going to do from one moment to the next or what was going to happen… A few weeks into the chaos of finding out about my brother’s drug use, my mother decided to tell everyone surrounding him that I was pushing my own agenda in trying to get him to seek help from an addiction treatment center that would do a combination of medication for his addiction, therapy for any underlying issues and group support. I received a phone call from his best friend and my father saying that she knew best about what was going on with him and what he needed because she saw him on a daily basis while I only saw him occasionally. They said sorry but they were going to support what she was advocating for (which was to give my brother more time, leave him be, let him go to a local service and see how he does)….What they didn’t know and what I regret not telling them is that she abused us…repeatedly, chronically, maliciously throughout our childhood and into adulthood. I let the secrets lie there, festering….and I’ve once again become an accomplice to his potential death. It was like walking away from the burning house because I know that if I go back in there I could be consumed by the flames. Shortly afterwards, he stopped speaking to me. I send him texts every few days telling him I love him, that I am here for him. I leave voicemails when his phone is working and tell him to please call me that I am worried, that I am here for him. It’s like hearing my voice on the surface of a lake….it echoes with a hollow loneliness on the vast, flat surface of chilly, dark waters. I picked back up with my drinking sometime in February….and I go back and forth between re-committing to my original plan to end my life or trying to stop and listen to my doctors that I could feel better….that I have children who need me….that I need to radically accept my past and inability to make my brother better. Saving souls is a bad practice….it’s egocentric and narcissistic to say that you want to save someone else…it’s messy and painful and fraught with failure...everyone tells me you can only be responsible for yourself…But, is that really accurate? Are we not responsible for the suffering of others….especially those we are intimately and intricately bound to? No one else but my brother knows what happened for all of those years…I suspect he has similar feelings and emotions that he struggles with…I am the only living testament to him and he is the only living testament to me…the only one who shared the same common lived experience so how could I not try and do something or anything or everything? In AA meetings, we recite the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference.
and sometimes it touches a deep part of me…. maybe I cannot do anything and must learn to accept life as it was then and is now. Maybe I can change my perspective or the way I relate to pain and suffering. One woman in our meeting spoke recently about losing a sponsee to a heroin addiction and how she was devastated by the loss but found comfort in the advice that we live our lives better in honor of those we have lost. That is beautiful, truly inspiring, but it’s beauty is fleeting. It seems that it is just a temporary salve—a comfort—a justification about why we must go on when others cannot. To think about it in any other way, would surely bring about our own suffering, perhaps our own demise. I am prepared to face that—to face suffering, to face pain. I cannot control my brother’s choices nor can I change or even forsee the outcome, but I can control myself in a very deliberate, careful way. I can stop eating and drink heavily as an active, noticeable protest to what is happening to my brother, to what happened to us as children, and to send a clear, distinct message that it is not okay, and that we are not okay. I may not save his soul or my soul or any soul... in fact, my actions may do the exact opposite; but I have grown tired and my improvisation skills have become futile.
Submitted April 19, 2016 at 08:29AM by pilgrim_tinkercreek http://ift.tt/1SoSklP SuicideWatch
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