It really sucked finding out that my brother has been on meth and homeless for the past ten years. Thats serious stuff. My brain keeps pointing out to me that every member of my immediate family is in a rapid state of decline. I'm the youngest, and it's scary for me.
My dad says he has declining self control about yelling as he ages. He admits he's angry at the world and apologized to me for feeling that way. He's increasingly haunted by the past, tortured by dreams and memories. He's still putting up a good fight though, since he's the only other member of my family besides me with a house, and he's still functioning relatively independently because he did plan ahead for this. It's hard watching a proud man struggle. But he's alive and I'm glad.
My half-brother is the same with the verbal abuse, except add meth and homelessness. He blames me for his problems, accusing me of imaginary things, even though I haven't seen him in person in like 15 years, for obvious reasons. His wife moved out of state to avoid him. He went to jail for never paying child support and his kids hate him. I remember when I thought he was the coolest big brother. We laughed a lot together as kids. He made bad choices, but he wasn't all bad. How could he let this happen to himself?
My mom is the most traumatized and "crazy", yet compared to the men, she's actually doing kind of okay now mentally, in my opinion. She is safe and not on the streets anymore. I don't need to worry as much because professionals are taking care of her, feeding her. She floats around in daydreams and I think that's okay. She has dementia-related behavioral problems too, (she breaks shit), but she seems way less angry without the men to be honest. The men seem angry with or without her.
Then there's me. I'm traumatized too, possibly more than everyone combined. I am the only one who got therapy, meditates, practices gratitude and yoga. Not that it's a cure-all, but it helps. I have the benefit of an education, a roof over my head, and a small but supportive chosen family. I've always been determined to do better than what I was modeled.
My biggest issue at the moment is that it feels like the more walls I put up to protect myself from addicts and the violently mentally ill, the more they aggressively try to break down those walls to hurt me. I blame myself because it doesn't seem like other people have this problem as much as me. The harassment and stalking has caused me to become somewhat agoraphobic, since noticing how much better I function alone, but that's probably just because so many loved ones are addicts, and I require so much downtime to recover every time one of them does something upsetting or gets verbally abusive or disappears leaving me to worry if they overdosed or pissed off the wrong person. If I could remove the addict infestation, I think I could restore the friendly sociable person I used to be, instead of being knocked down so often and being forced to process everyone else's emotions for them.
I don't expect miracles, but I am very optimistic. My grandparents appear to me in dreams and reassure me things will get better. Whether messages from beyond or mere fleeting figments of imagination, their message is the right one. Tune out the angry words of addicts, tune into helpful thoughts within. My grandparents may be dead, but their wisdom lives on in the recesses of my mind. That gives me enough strength to keep moving forward. Everything I need is within myself. I am alive and I am grateful for each day on this messy beautiful earth.
8:35 a.m. - 2022-10-22