Hello, everybody! Long time no “see”. I don’t comment anymore but I still lurk everyday and read your diaries and I’m still as liberal as always. My financial situation is better and work consumes my day but I always find the time to see what The Kossers have to say about all things political.
What I have to tell you isn’t necessarily political...or maybe it is. I need advice from some of you smart folks, many of which probably work with or are familiar with paranoid schizophrenics who have a side order of depression to go with it. It’s my brother. I can’t take care of him anymore. I feel guilty about it but the abuse I suffer is really getting to me.
I put on a mask and go to work and do my job as best I can. It’s all the energy I have. My weekends are spent sleeping and doing everything I can to avoid my brother which is mostly confining myself to one room and living my life through the TV. I’m a supervisor at work. I teach classes and I was well trained in public speaking, I train people to be confident customer service phone reps, I “redirect” people when they break company rules, I supervise them on the phone and advise them what to tell customers when they have questions. I feel like a phony. I run a small group of trainees and oversee everything they do but I can’t manage my own house.
I took my brother in 5 years ago because he can’t take care of himself due to his mental illness. I thought I would be signing up just to be his payee so he could receive his SS check. As I got more familiar with his situation, I saw the condition he was living in and I took it upon myself to do more than just cash his check for him. I took him out of the squalor he was living in and rented a decent apartment for him. I bought him a bed, microwave, dishes, toiletries, clothes, etc. I found for him a decent couch and table. It wasn’t much but it was a good start. I also helped him get an EBT card, paid his rent for him, made sure he went to doctor appts and had his meds. I extended the usage of my washer/dryer to him so he could save on laundry. He was only a five minute walk away from finding me whenever he needed something. I felt so good. All the years I worried where he was at and how he was doing...that nightmare was over. His nightmare of a life was over.
The nightmare had actually just begun. For ME.
See, I had no idea how sick he was. I thought he needed a new start and somebody to help him out and he’d be fine. That’s the mask he wears. He’s afraid of being too much of a burden so he won’t be abandoned again. He’d been abandoned by several family members before, including our own mother.
I noticed first that he never came over to wash his clothes. Then I noticed that when I would drop in on him, he’d take a really long time to come outside and then he would “fake me out” of coming into his apartment by jumping in my car and claiming he needed something from the store, like headache meds. This went on for a few months until I had enough and demanded to come in the apartment. What I saw shocked me so much, I just started screaming. He put cigarettes out into his barely used couch like it was an ashtray. The yellow carpet was covered with a thin layer of tobacco. The sink in the bathroom was clogged, the bathtub was black, the microwave had scorch marks because he put foil into it...I’m not even gonna talk about the kitchen. Holy fucking hell. And this is after he straightened up because he knew I was coming over.
I know I handled it wrong. I screamed and yelled because he was lying to me and trying to deceive me about the true nature of his condition. We had already had some arguments and I felt like he was much too aggressive and abusive to a person who saved his life and improved it but I figured that I would just let him have his space and still oversee his life to he could have some sense of well being and hope for his future. Boy was I wrong about all that. There was no way in hell. I spent the day unclogging his sinks and cleaning. I threatened him. “If I see this shit like this again, your ass is coming to live with ME! WHAT THE FUCK, DUDE!?”
A few months later, I fell out with my live-in boyfriend and he left me because he had been cheating on me. I took it hard. I wanted him to leave because we weren’t sleeping in the same room for years and it just couldn’t continue that way. I saw an opportunity to take my brother in and give him my spare room which was best for everybody because that apartment he was living in didn’t improve him. He was still living in the squalor of his own making. He could help me pay the rent, too, because I was only making $9.00/hr back then.
Just like he did with his own apartment, he began to trash my house, leaving tobacco everywhere, making everything filthy and I had to spend my days off cleaning up after him. His room was a mess and I caught him several times in my house or in my backyard yelling and cursing at the voices in his head and disturbing my neighbors. Over the past 5 years, I’ve had the same discussions with him literally, hundreds of times. Most of the time he blows up and starts verbally abusing me and deflecting and insulting me and slut-shaming me and gaslighting me. All of this is very upsetting to me because I’m no idiot when it comes to the tactics of mental, emotional and verbal abuse. Over the years I shut down and started feeling resentful towards him. It’s a cycle that repeats itself endlessly. A handful of times, he’s attempted to apologize but I know it’s only temporary because he’s going to do it again.
I still wouldn’t let him go. I was so afraid of what would happen to him without me that I was just grateful for the quiet times and hoped and hoped that he would stop abusing me for trying to teach him how to live like a human being. These are the things he says to me:
“Wow! These men out here that you date must have really made you crazy with their abuse. You think everybody is abusing you! GTFO here with that bullshit!” (gaslighting)
“That’s why nobody likes you, because you’re a bitch! Fuck you, bitch!” (diminishing my character)
“You ain’t nothin but a slut-ass bitch!” (slut-shaming)
“You think you’re tough?! Bitch, I will beat your ass! You think you’re tough like a man, don’t you? You think you’re a bad ass, huh? Look at you, with your face a frowned up like you wanna kill me! I ain’t scared of you, bitch!” (projection)
“Yeah, I think you need psychiatric help! You’re crazy as fuck. Look at you!” (projection and gaslighting)
“I’m gonna have the police put you in jail for life for arguing with me! Yeah, we’ll see what happens when the cops get here. Your ass is going to jail!” (delusion)
“Whatever, you’re just jealous of me and you hate me because I made straight-As in school! That’s what this shit is about!” (delusion and deliberate mischaracterization — I was also a straight-A student and he knows that)
“I’m up in here starvin and shit! You need to buy me some more clothes, I don’t have shit!” (delusion and hyperbole)
He is NOT starving. There is food that has to be cooked, which he knows how to do but when he doesn’t have instant microwave food, he’s “starving”. He knows how to cook the basic stuff that I keep in my house. There’s plenty of it, too. If I don’t spend my night cooking giant pots of food everyday after I work my ass off, he’s STARVING?!
He has clothes to wear. He has garbage bags full of filthy clothes that he wears for days until he can’t wear them anymore because they’re too filthy. I buy him socks, underwear and they all end up god-knows-where because I never see him wear them again. I guess I have to do all his laundry, too.
Look, I know that this is all very common with people like him. I have no problem talking to him and reminding him to wash his clothes, keep the trash out of his room, take a shower, cook some food, etc. I’m trying to rehabilitate him. I get push-back in the form of verbal abuse.
He’s not just mentally ill. He’s misogynistic, nasty, abusive and he’s a flat out asshole to me and to women he’s been in relationships with. He has not one shred of respect for a woman, especially me. I’m not just dealing with mental illness, I’m dealing with a monster who’s just not a nice person to begin with. He’s always been kind of a dick to his brothers, too. To everyone. Nobody wants to deal with his Jeckyl and Hyde bullshit and his two-faced personality.
Last night, he locked himself out and was banging on the door. I have downstairs neighbors who I was afraid would have to come and let him in and would be disturbed by that. I stuck my head out the window. “Are you locked out? Where is your key?” He replies, “I told you I lost it!” I respond, “You did not tell me you lost it! Have you been having the neighbors let you in? Holy shit, dude!”. I pushed the screen down hard because I was completely exasperated. I let him in. He starts verbally abusing me.
“Who the fuck you think you are slamming the window down like that?! Bitch, I will beat your ass!”
I lost it. I sat by the window and yelled everything I had to say to him right out the window. I repeated everything he said and I did it so I could have witnesses to how he treats me. He’s got everybody on the street thinking he’s a nice dude. Not to me, he’s not. Anybody who was listening heard the whole story. The whole time, he’s also yelling at me, too. I just wanted everybody he thinks is his friend to hear how terrible he is to me.
The police came eventually because a neighbor called. My brother hid in his room from the police that he was so sure were going to “take me to jail” at his request which only reinforced the fact that everything he says is to intimidate and manipulate me. I calmly walked downstairs and spoke to the police. I told them the whole story, I expressed my disappointment at not being able to help him anymore. I told the police that I needed to find a communal living situation for him because I can’t watch him all day and there’s too much animosity between us at this point for me to help anymore. The police officers expressed their sympathy for us and wished us both a better situation and politely left.
I need advice. I’m at work typing this out now because I have a “free” day with no training classes and we’re getting ready for a company summer party tomorrow. I have no PC at home anymore so I use my phone to surf and google the best I can. That’s the main reason, I gave up commenting here and just decided to lurk.
I can’t live like this anymore. I’m showing signs of being an abused person. I’m always startled by him entering a room I’m in, even though I know he lives in the house. I avoid talking to him or seeing him as much as possible. I don’t have any pleasantries or friendship towards him, I mostly grunt “here” when I give him his money for cigs and pop everyday and do my best to make any conversation as brief as I can. I don’t like him anymore. I don’t get over the things he says to me. They just pile up and now I’m crushed under them and I feel like I’m suffocating. I drink too much. I sleep too much. I cry sometimes. Sometimes I’m so numb, I can’t move.
He can’t live like this anymore. I’m away from home all day. He has no routine, no structure and nothing to look forward to but his friends on the street where we live. I wanted him to have friends so bad. I was so glad. But these are MY neighbors and I’m not going to let him make me look bad to them anymore just so he can be manipulative and get people to feel bad for him. Maybe they think I don’t take care of him. With the way he is, it certainly would appear that way. People are giving us boxes of food and giving him clothes. Do they think I’m not buying him stuff? What is he telling them?
So, in Cleveland, Ohio, is there anywhere that he could live and they will help him better than I can? Where do I look? Who do I call? I can’t believe that after 6 years, I haven’t even given it a thought.
Sorry this is so long. I had to vent. I had to tell my story. Thanks for reading and please advise me however you can.
*Update*
I’ve been in and out of my office taking care of work stuff. I’m reading as many comments as I can but I won’t be able to do much until later as far as making calls and everything. It turned out to be a less free day than I anticipated. I broke down and cried during a meeting with two coworkers and they listened to me and reassured me. One of them said I could come to their house.
There’s all kinds of advice in this thread and it’s all good. Some of it is critical of how I’ve been and how I have enabled this situation because I really didn’t know what I was in for. I agree with all that. It’s not “harsh”, it’s what I need to be saying to myself. Thank you.
And some have asked about meds and doctors. He does have a doctor and he does take his meds. They seem to help with the auditory hallucinations sometimes. They’re just not helping with the delusion and paranoia.
I shouldn’t be yelling at him but if I don’t and I just shut down, he walks all over me even harder. Either way, I’m fucked. He’s got to go.
I am very much in need of abuse counseling. I will do this. This will be hard, but I will do this for him and for me. My heart is breaking for him. I can’t believe I have been in this storm this long. I’ll be back with more updates.
.jpg?1428854277)
