I Live By The Crazy Train Depot

I’m late publishing this blog post. Usually, I try to post on Tuesdays and Fridays. It isn’t a schedule that is set in stone but it seems to be just the right amount to keep one’s interest without inundating with post after post. I didn’t make it to Tuesday this week.

I’m not going to lie. I’ve been staring at this screen for over an hour. Some days the writing just flows and sometimes I can’t think of a single word to save my life.

This is one of those times. It doesn’t help that I’m distracted by the television. Reality T.V. is my guilty pleasure. There’s something about watching other people’s drama that’s therapeutic to me. It takes my mind off my own drama.

Although it’s strictly peripheral drama right now, it may be part of what is preventing me from being able to write and be witty.  

When you have a family member with mental illness and/or addiction, you can never fully escape the drama of that. That’s true even if you detach yourself and remove the toxicity from your life. It still finds you. It still seeps in when you least expect it.

Today, out of the blue, I received a bizarre message on Facebook Messenger. It was obviously from somebody who knows my brother or is acquainted with him or has somehow come across him.

I should give some backstory, I suppose, since I often mention my brother and his issues but don’t really elaborate.

My brother was officially diagnosed with, what they called back then, “manic-depression” when he was around fourteen years old, but I can look back at him as far as I can remember and even as a very small child I knew he was “different”. I also imagine he would now be diagnosed with a myriad of other things. The signs of mental illness, OCD, paranoia and other afflictions were always there. It’s just that nobody knew what to look for or what they meant.

As often happens, the mental illness drove him to self-medicate starting somewhere around age thirteen or fourteen, as far as I know. His stubbornness and refusal to be treated for either his mental illness or his addictions basically led to him not being part of my life, except in the most minimal of ways, from those early teen years on.

It was almost as though my parents had two family units.  They had the one with me, which was made up of school and friends and SATs and the typical things that parents and teenage girls butt heads about. Then there was the one with my brother, that was made up of car accidents, dropping out of school, drunken fights with my father, brushes with the law and even an unplanned pregnancy.

As hard as it was for me, I often wonder how my parents survived, hovering between these two worlds.

Well, I say that, but the brutal truth is that my mother didn’t survive it.  She engrossed herself in it so much after my father died, that she neglected her own health and it killed her.

Since my mother died, my brother has only momentarily floated in and out of my life. He used to call when he needed money, but I put an end to that pretty quickly, telling him he was welcome to call me any time to talk but he was never to call me drunk or asking for money.

I didn’t hear from him for two years after that.

When he reappeared, he was sober for the first time in thirty years. Getting a jail sentence and mandatory rehab for DUI will do that, I suppose. We had a period of about a year or two where we would communicate through Facebook and texting and I wondered if he was finally getting his shit together, and maybe actually getting treatment for the underlying issues for his addictions.

Then he disappeared again. I haven’t heard from him in two and a half years. While I’m concerned for him as a person, I’m not actively looking for him and I’m not actively worried about him.

I know that sounds really cold. Really detached. It’s ok if you think that. That’s why I don’t usually talk about the details much. People who have had their siblings their whole lives simply don’t and can’t understand it. I know most people think that they would be out there leaving no stone unturned, to find him.

The thing is, even if I did find him, nothing would change. He refuses to get well. The brutal reality is, I refuse to enable him to be sick. I could tolerate a lot and would have an enormous well of patience to pull from, if he had the slightest inclination to get better and to actively participate in his own treatment.

He has always refused, though. Always dug in his heels. Always thought he knew everything and the rest of us were just idiots. Always knew more than the experts.

I have a husband and kids and grandkids who need me. I can’t kill myself for a person who really doesn’t want help.

While this may seem really sad to other people, it is no longer sad to me. I’ve had thirty six years to get used to the fact that I only really had an older brother for about ten years and then I didn’t, and I never will again. To coin a cliché phrase, it is what it is.

As I said earlier, though, I don’t always succeed in avoiding it, though. It still creeps in through the cracks and crevices. I guess I will never fully escape it.

Just before Christmas, we got a message on Facebook from a lady trying to find the owner of a dog she found. It was my brother’s dog and a picture of the dog and the tag she was wearing verified it. The lady did manage to find who she thought was the owner but said it didn’t look like my brother, although the dog clearly knew him and loved him. She said he and the girl he was with didn’t look like they had eaten  in a while, so she bought them some food and offered to take the dog to the vet for an injured paw.

I didn’t hear back from her after that, but I assume that as always, my brother managed to find someone to take care of him, even for just the moment.

He was always good at that.

I had mostly put that out of my mind until this odd message I received on Messenger from a man I’ve never heard of and don’t know at all.

His message was rambling and he basically told me my brother is an “anthropologist” who along with his pit bull has invaded Pittsburg, California and Antioch, California (both places my brother has lived) and is busy “hypnotizing people and their pets, including children”. Apparently, my brother and “his associates” have moved to Pittsburg and Antioch “in many forms, including were-animals or shape-shifters and Phantoms or Creepers, spirits that possess people.”

You know, the usual stuff you say to a random stranger on the internet.

He went on to warn me about the security of the United States being in jeopardy and that I should be “prompt in my response to alert my superiors and be aware of the hypnotizing being done with eye to eye contact with one of these witches.”

Ummm. Yeah. I’ll get right on that.

Anybody know which “superiors” I should alert?

I knew my brother was many things but I had no idea he was a shape-shifter. And his dog too!

I should be shocked, stunned, puzzled. I was for just a moment and even texted some friends with a screenshot and made a joke about somebody being one enchilada short of a combination plate.  

The truth is, the shock doesn’t last long and usually gives way to a feeling of, “Oh yeah. There you are and there’s that stuff again. I was wondering when you would show up again.”

I can almost get to a place where I forget that there are people in the world who hear voices, think everyone is staring at them and think that danger from extra-terrestrials and secret societies lurks around every corner.

I almost forget. Until I’m reminded. And there’s always a reminder.

Maybe that’s why I use humor to cope. Laughing about it has always been better for me than crying about it. This blog probably reflects that. There’s nothing like an inappropriate joke to make you forget that your brother is a shape-shifting were-creature who is hypnotizing pets and children in Antioch, California.

I bet you can’t say that about YOUR brother.

I’m not answering the mystery-dude who sent me the message, obviously. If he messages me again, I’ll likely block him.

Maybe in a really strange, out-there kind of way, this is the Universe (or God, or whatever you believe in) letting me know he’s still out there and maybe even that he’s thinking of me in whatever narcissistic capacity he is able to. You may find it strange, but I actually take comfort in that.

I’ll end this post as I do so many others…

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring.

** But not OCD-paranoid-tin-foil-hat-weird, ok? Remember: medication is your friend. Seriously. **