New Year, Same Problems

For most of my life I have been in charge of managing my brother's life.  Anytime he got in trouble or couldn't handle the stresses of life it was my job to make sure that he didn't hurt himself or someone else.  This became exhausting pretty quickly.  I started to resent my brother for always needing attention.  For not being responsible for his actions.  For needing the rest of us to tailor our lives to making sure he was okay. 

As he has gotten older my brother has been less destructive to himself physically but has not made any progress towards managing his life as an adult.  On Christmas Eve I found out that my brother is in yet another financial crisis created by him being careless and assuming that the rules of the world don't apply to him.  It has been less than a year since I saved him from the last financial crisis. 

Part of me wants to step away.  He's in his mid thirties.  He lives in another state.  At some point he has to step up to the plate and take care of himself.  But then I think of the other times that I have stepped back and I worry about things becoming worse.  As unfair as it is, this seems to be my burden in life. 

I have never had any desire to have children.  But I feel like raising my brother is a job that I got when he was born that will never go away.  It would be so much easier if my brother had a disability that was visible.  People would understand.  But with mental illness people can appear completely normal to friends and co-workers and be a complete mess inside. 

You can't force an adult man to see a therapist and go back on meds when he isn't a danger to himself physically.  And honestly, even if you could, I don't have fond memories of his time in therapy.  Weekly office visits and lots of drugs but no real progress.  Violent episodes.  Suicide attempts.  Jail time.  I am grateful that those days are over but still hopeful that there is a better alternative. 

My Brother's Keeper

I am my brother’s keeper. I have been for my entire life. When we were kids my mother was too wrapped up in coping with my father’s illness to parent us so we were often left to make decisions for ourselves. We have a family history of mental illness; primarily bipolar disorder and depression. It is possible that my brother would have been afflicted with these problems regardless of our upbringing. But I doubt it would have been as severe or that he would have exhibited signs as early as he did. My brother saw a psychologist weekly from the time that he was three years old through high school. He started seeing the therapist less regularly once he was old enough to skip and cancel his appointments. He has been on a number of different drugs but none of them provided him with significant relief because he didn’t take them regularly and because he wasn’t going to the therapist for follow up sessions to work through his problems.

My brother has had a difficult life. He was molested as a child but because he had no adult support system in place we didn’t find out about it until 6 years ago. A month after my father died, one of my brother’s closest friends was killed in a car accident. A few years later my brother and a close friend of his were in a serious car accident. The fire department had to cut the car apart to get them out and airlift them to the hospital. My brother suffered a broken arm, a concussion and numerous cuts and bruises. His friend has been a paraplegic since that accident. My brother’s destructive behavior increased dramatically during this time. We went through several brushes with the law that led to jail time and suicide attempts but it seemed like he turned a corner about 5 years ago.

Since this time he has held down a job without any incidents. He isn’t getting into trouble or hanging out with people who could get him into trouble. He is dating someone who might turn out to be the one. He seems to have become a responsible adult. But every time I relax and think everything is fine, the old him shows up; the destructive brother who is irresponsible. He either calls me so I can fix whatever he’s screwed up or my mother calls me and tells me to call him to help him out. And I always fix it because if I don’t no one will.

Sometimes I feel selfish for not wanting to clean up my brother’s messes and guide him through life. I want to yell to mom: “Why don’t you help him you’re his mother”! But I don’t because I can’t. It will only make me upset and in the end I’ll still have to fix everything. I know that people have had a much more difficult life than I have and I recognize that my brother has made significant progress over the years and is 200% better than the person that he used to be. I get all that, I really do. But that doesn’t make it any easier when all I want to do is sit on the couch and watch movies with my husband but can’t because I have to take care of my brother. I hope that one day I won’t be needed to fill this role because he will completely grow out of it or start seeing a therapist to receive regular treatment. But until then I’ll be there for him as long as he needs me.