“Once you realize you deserve a bright future, letting go of your dark past is the best choice you will ever make.”
I first moved into my brother's house after living in an apartment with a couple roommates. My partner really didn’t enjoy living there with them so we decided to leave. We had a couple choices, live on our own, which is expensive!!! Or live with a family member. At the time we only had one family member available to live with. Due to how inheritance works my younger brother's father (my stepdad) got the land after my grandmother died. It’s paid for, and you’ve only got to pay taxes and electricity. We moved in quickly… it turned out fine for a while. It was a dump but it was tolerable.
My brother isn’t the brightest, the most hard-working, or the cleanest person. I’m not saying this to pick on him, just most of the issues we have to deal with are pertaining to these traits. He's sweet though. Right now, he’s without a job. His mental health is in decline and he struggles to keep it together. I love him to pieces and don’t want anything to happen to him but he can be exhausting. We’ve been through a lot together and our childhood was not the best. I understand and sympathize with his struggles. But there lies my issue with this situation. Maybe I’m too lenient.
We started living there earlier this year. He was having a couple mental breakdowns here and there. I’m not sure what his diagnosis is, but I do know that he is mentally unwell. He’ll say some off-the-wall remarks about how his family is ‘in the business’ of human trafficking. Or how he’s not actually his father’s son. Or how my grandma left clues for him to find out all this crazy shit. I knew this going in because I thought that our being there would help him get into therapy and see a psychiatrist. But what I failed to see was how much other people interfered with his well-being. His family would chalk his bouts of psychosis and mental breakdowns to just ‘hormones’. Or when he said he was feeling ignored, they’d ignore him! They truly do not know how to help a person. As well as his own limitations, like his refusal to work with 'rude' professionals. Or others that he deemed that has slighted him in some way. Then we had ‘visitors’.
A couple months later when three new people arrived. I had a day off. I work a lot. So I was ready to enjoy my day off relaxing at home, reading books, chatting with one of my best friends who is also my cousin, etc. This was before I was big into blogging, and I didn’t write regularly then. I did journal though. Anyways, so to set the scene, I’m on the floor because we don’t have a mattress, chilling and jamming out to music. I like to sing and read that as a cat screeching, to my songs. Sometimes for hours. And then I hear screaming. Shouting. Doors slamming. Walls are being hit. Screeching, not in the potentially musical way that I do. I realize I’m not home alone, unfortunately. It was my cousin's father and his girlfriend. They are not our age. More than twice, actually. I thought at the time, that this was a one-off thing, and only my day was ruined, as they were there for SEVEN HOURS. I knew my brother sometimes used my older cousin for help fixing things, like the leaky roof, a smashed door, or leaking pipes. The house is a dump, okay? But what I failed to realize was that they were now joining us in living there. Then a couple days after they moved in, another one joined! My step-aunt, who’s doing time, had a fiancee who is now also living with us, who is also in his late 50s. I’m in a sitcom or drama now. Much alike with the show ‘Shameless’, the TV version of my childhood and now the present time. It’s not as entertaining when it’s real life. Especially, when a loved one’s health is at stake.
Let’s just streamline an expansive list of what is wrong with the house:
-It’s falling apart
-There’s mold
-Animal shit
-The sink is ALWAYS overflowing with dishes
-I don’t think I’ve seen anyone sweep the floor clean
-There are water leaks EVERYWHERE
There’s so much wrong it’s exhausting to document. Hindsight is 20-20, I should have known based off of my brother’s previous actions that it wasn’t going to get better, only worse. Everyone smokes, now I don’t mind smokers, but they smoke IN THE HOUSE. No open windows, no fans running, and there’s no central air so no circulation to speak of. AND I have asthma. It’s gotten better as I’ve aged but I don’t think hot-boxing cigarettes helps at all. I’ve asked them to stop, but because of the age difference or simply not caring what I say, they said they would only smoke when I’m gone. WHAT SENSE DOES THAT MAKE? The smoke never leaves because they don’t open anything! Not a door, nor a window to let the breeze in. My solution was to cram the cracks of the door to my room shut and buy an air purifier. It helps. But every time we open the door, I get wafts of garbage dump and smoke. I swear the smell of the grime is like a paste in the air. Their attitudes clearly haven’t helped my brother at all. They aren’t considerate of anything. Sometimes you have to bandaid the situation until you can do something drastic.
Now my brother is abnormal to put it lightly. He’s eclectic by nature and often confusing to talk to. He makes word collages of sorts on the walls, takes what seems like trash to me, and tacks it to the wall as well. Reminds me of those investigation scenes where there are cork boards with pin-style tacks and colored yarn, usually red, leaving lines all over a map with pictures. But his is less organized. Reminds me of a corrupted file or something. It’s only gotten worse as these people have moved in. I know he wanted to help out my cousin's girlfriend, who is in an abusive relationship. Due to our childhood, he has a strong attachment to mother figures and intensely wants to help battered women. But the stress of their relationship, the fighting, yelling, breaking things, kicking him out only for him to come back. It’s all very much copied and pasted from when we were kids. It’s taking a toll on him and you can’t convince him to help himself. He’s a brick wall. And so he takes his stress out on himself and the objects around him. One morning I woke up to go to work and went to use the bathroom, like I usually do. The general grime never leaves no matter how much you clean but you get used to it. Well, something was new that morning. There were white footprints throughout the bathroom. I look to the left as I’m sitting on the toilet. There are huge splotches of paint on the walls of the laundry room that is falling, or I should say rotting, apart. I follow the trail with my eyes to the right, it goes underneath the bathroom door. I step out, after finishing up, and there’s a trail through the hallway. Being the inquisitive person I am, I follow the extremely obvious trail into the kitchen. One of his corrupted collages is now bathed in white paint, and the floor around the base of the pantry door now turned paper mâché is what I would best describe as a half moon with dents where feet would be. That’s not where the trail ends, it goes outside. There’s paint on the grass, on the concrete, on the trees, EVEN THE DOG. I'm still finding more paint spots to this day, a couple weeks later.
Not only was I having to deal with my brother’s mental health, but I also had to see his father as well. His father abused me when I was little in almost every way you can to a human being. Seeing him causes me intense stress that lasts days. My type of stress is the emotional numbing kind, I can still function, and do my job, but I feel like I lose my ‘soul’. Hobbies go out the window, health declines, and there becomes a disconnect between my mind and body, which eludes me until I start to have difficulties. I’m in therapy, but it still affects me greatly. The constant stress was affecting my personal growth as well. It’s hard to quantify exactly how in words but I just felt ‘stuck’. But I'm stubborn, I refuse to let this situation keep me upset. I've kept my head down for months but I've never gotten depressed like I used to.
With these people, that I can’t get rid of, residing in this home. He seems out of reach. But I will help my brother from afar. I hope he will get better in time. Maybe a new professional will help him in an unexpected way. But now that I’m married, I have to protect myself and my partner from further harm. We were planning an out, and I told my brother ahead of time. I was looking for an apartment but I don’t make enough income to cover 3x rent like most apartments around me require. The few that don’t are filled to capacity. I had to ask my father-in-law for some help but before we could get back together on some solutions, something incredible happened!
My stepmother texted me. A sweet text, seeing how I was. I told her about my situation and how we were looking at leaving. She told me that there was room to stay in at her home and that it was open to me as long as I was willing to share with my older brother. That’s another story for why he’s home, but I digress. She said she would look for a bunk and that we could come over as soon as they bought it. The very next day she sent me a picture... of an RV! I couldn’t ask for a better mother. I’m so happy that she is willing to help me out so much. I told my brother that I will continue to help him out with the bills for a couple months to give him some extra time to figure things out. Now that I’m free of this garbage prison that I’m in, the world seems brighter. Like my therapist suggests, I shouldn't sacrifice myself to help others. I need to consider my physical and mental health as well.
“The worse the passage the more welcome the port. ”
This is a story with hardships that I hope some of you can learn from if you are in a tough spot. I'm a person who has a hard time saying no or standing up for himself but sometimes enough is enough. If you don't take anything from this story at least take this: There is hope. Always. Sometimes you have to tough out a situation longer than desired but you can bide your time and make it out to the other side of the dark tunnel. Sometimes it's your own hard work, and sometimes it's through the help of others. We don't always have to go through life alone. As the beautiful saying of my state goes 'While I breathe, I hope.'
As always thanks for the read, this one was a long one. Thanks for sticking it out with me. I want to build a community of individuals who care about each other. And I don't want to put on a show of unrealistic happiness. I have hard times too but they give me character. I won't let the hard times beat me. I'll always get up. You should too!
@timmy-turnip ♥️