When it rains...

You get a little complacent when things go well - not perfect, not even close but well. We see the signs, the cracks, the theoretical nightmares but we pray each time that this time will be different. My sister can live in scenarios we could not even ponder but she does. Her friends are addicts, other people struggling with mental illness - they are odd and out of place. My family always feels a little uncomfortable around them because she lacks the ability to be discerning. She always says, "Oh my God, I have never met anyone like them. They are seriously so cool and really nice". It's like a giant gong in my ear when I hear it. A warning gong. Sometimes they are the nicest, coolest people. There have been some. They never last. They see her easily, they want to help her, they usually smother her. We want to warn them but we just smile. We close our eyes and bite our tongues when we get the fresh newcomer who says, "she just needs a little love and care". We nod. Of course she does. We are not morons. We know that the girl needs some love and care. We know she needs money too. She needs someone to talk her down when she is panicked so she won't cut or use or worst case scenario try to kill herself. We know that love and care are easily mis-represented by her as an open door. The boundaries blur. The rules, the code of a family living with an addict start to sway. We know. We know that in an attempt to have some small power in her life she will fight you over the smallest thing and make the biggest deal over nothing. We know it will eat her when you gently remind her that there are some things she just can't do. We know. I'll tell you what else we know - we know when she has met someone just like her. We know that the clock starts to tick right away in how long before the whole thing explodes. It is inevitable because despite her flaws, my sister is strong and she doesn't like to take any crap. It is the only thing we cling to knowing no matter what happens she will fight to the death. So believe me, we are glad when our fighter thats he is took an incredible hit and came back from it - her latest room mate, her addicted friend who wanted to walk through recovery with her - stabbed her.

Yeah, she stabbed her.

When my phone rings at 5:30am, it is never good. I listened to her voice as she hysterically relayed the night's events to me. She said she was scared and alone. She said she was tired of doing this shit. She said she didn't want to do it anymore. For the first time in a long time I told her i would pick her up. She said she wasn't stitched up yet. She would call me when she was done. I waited for her to call. She didn't. She called my husband later that night and said she had gone back to the apartment and then her room mate showed up so she called the police again and they escorted her out because her name was not on the lease. We told her not to put her name on the lease in case anything happened, she wouldn't be responsible. AS it turns out, ti also means the police can escort you without any of your things as the person who stabbed you watches all smug as you leave. She can never win. How can these things keep happening to her unatoned for? But of course, it is an easy answer - she's an addict. She has mental illness. She is barely a human being anymore. And she is so aware of this.

Here's the catch. I didn't try to call her back. I waited all day for her to call me and she didn't. It was like my get out of jail free card. I planned all day what I would do with her son, with my kids so she could stay with me. I didn't - couldn't - let them see her that way. I begged and I pleaded with God to just make it right this one time. Give me some strength to be there for her. I've gotten so cold with her - expect these terrible things to happen to her that I can no longer see the significance of the situations. Someone fucking stabbed my sister. Think about that. What would you do if someone stabbed someone you loved? Would you cry? Would you get in your car? Would you seek justice or make a million phone calls until someone noticed and gave a shit? You would. Everyone would. I stayed home and crawled under my covers and stayed there all day. I didn't cry. I didn't phone. I didn't do anything. I thought to myself that if she called I would spring into action. I would do right by her this time. I kept the phone by my bed. I waited. I was relieved when she called my husband and said she had somewhere to stay and was looking into a residential program to stay in. She is so smart that way, my sister. She can make impossible things happen just when you thought she had burned her last bridge. She was not this amazing when she just had to call us and we came running. And we did. And now we don't. I don't.

But something funny happens when I shirk my duty to my sister to someone else. I can justify it ten ways to Tuesday and everyone supports me. But the funny thing is I start to fall. It is as if I can feel her pain, sweating it out of every pore. I can't get myself out of bed. I can't smile. I see no joy in anything. I cry in between every visit at work. I lose interest in clients and I don't call them back. I can't wait to get home and do nothing. I waste my life - my practically perfect life. I don't want it anymore. All the colors fade, the sun never shines as brightly and if it does, I feel uncomfortable and unworthy. It is like her disease chase me down and pins me to the ground and asks me "How do you like it?". I feel her. I ooze her - bloody, pussy ooze. We are dying together.

Why don't I go to her then? Why don't I embrace her and give her the love and care that even virtual strangers know she needs so desperately? When I have her, why can't I enjoy her? Take delight in her? Why do I feel so venomous around her - so distant and cold? I know that if I let anything in - if I feel one tiny bit, just one little thing - it will overwhelm me. It eats me from the inside out. That voice - that hysterical voice telling me she got stabbed - it got me. I felt the stab of feeling. I felt it just a tiniest bit. It wiggled into me like a hook worm before I even knew it was there. Microscopic. It festered and grew and it started to consume me. The tiniest feeling of regret and guilt and pain - it started to devoured me. I have worked so hard to feel nothing. I simply cannot afford that luxury. And even with that one tiny bit I can feel it suffocating everything that matters. Nothing matters while she is sick and unloved and uncared for. And I hold my breath and I hope that someone, some unsuspecting someone will come along and fill in for me - fill her up just a tiny bit and make her feel worthy. Because I am no longer capable. I am useless to her and now to me.

I want to know - how can someone stab your sister while you stay home and curl up in your bed? I feel vile and despicable. But I know the consequences of letting her back in my life. I am unable to keep her out. When she is in, there is no one else. I would do this - I have done this, hoping she would get better. But she doesn't. She just devours me and everything in my life. She doesn't even know it. We love her too much. And from hr point of view, it looks like we do not love her at all.

Unravelling

My husband is struggling with depression. This isn't entirely surprising given our circumstances over the last two years and he is just finishing a masters program. You would think he has landed in the exact right relationship if needing support for depression given that I have years of experience in dealing with people I love having depression. You would think by now I would know just what to say and how to say it. You would think I would be the last one to judge. But you would be wrong. It is my personal struggle to support him and he knows it. He has managed our lives through so much trauma and discontent. He has had to watch me go through my own merciful pain with absolutely no background whatsoever in depression and mental illness. His expectation is that I be there to support him and he is right. I am wrong. I know this.

I have personally been a champion of the cause of mental illness - rights, perceptions, discriminations. I have waggled my finger at many others about their narrow views and inability to understand. I feel like someone needs to waggle their finger at me. I want nothing to do with this. I feel bitter that my husband is going through depression. I feel angry and am resorting back to "you could stop this if you would just try" attitude. I feel cheated and I am pissed off. It's not the right response. I know he is very confused and I feel helpless to remedy this. I don't want to hold anyone else up with this despicable disease. I want it to stop infecting my life. I feel like even when I am depressed and low that I am incapable of caring for even myself - in fact, it is the times when I come to despise myself. It pushes me to get up and get out of that place even though it is clear to me that I have never quite eased myself out of the hole since my sister got sick again. I am not a well person. I am not making well decisions. I am putting my marriage at risk because I am screaming to the powers that be that I refuse to take anymore mental illness in my life. I have drawn my line in the sand. It makes me hate myself and yet I wonder if I could manage without doing so.

I miss my husband. I wonder if he and my former sister that I miss so much are somewhere frolicking in the flowers. I picture them with rosy cheeks and silliness that doesn't cover perceived inadequacies. I picture them laughing and crying at all the right times and being happy to be here. I picture the life we all used to share before this happened to us. We are so cold now, unable to see each other's perspectives, unwilling even. We want redemption. We want exactly what we cannot give anymore - compassion and peace. I want to smack myself when I tell my husband that I simply cannot help him. I tell him I have done this all my life and I don't want to do it anymore. Indeed there are days I am repulsed by his helplessness and then I am equally disgusted by my selfishness.

I see my Father in my husband so clearly and it makes me mad that Freud always seemed to be on to something with his theories. We repeat our comfort with family of origin. I tried to trick Freud's theory and find someone utterly opposite of my family. I used to joke that my husband had rainbows shoved up his ass because he was always so cheerful. He used to wake me up everyday with a silly voice and a kiss. It used to make me so mad because I couldn't get back to sleep. I used to tell him I needed an hour in the morning to work up to happy and I enjoyed my miserable musings in the morning - thank you very much. But he was persistent and unwaivering. I was so convinced of his infallibility to mental illness that I married him within a year of our meeting. He was gentle and kind with my sister and he loved my mom - genuinely, not just for me. And we joked about how my mom loved him more than her own kids. She was so proud that he wanted to be in our family and it was probably the first time my mom ever felt safe with one of our boyfriends. She said she could curl up in his capable hands and just fall asleep, even when her worry threatened to destroy her. He was something of a Saviour in my family. Not too much pressure right?

I feel like we have ruined him. It was only a matter of time. He is dark and brooding now. He has seen the worst of mental illness, he has been undone by it. Now he is plagued by it and the light that used to seep out of him is gone. It seemed impossible to me to topple this giant of a man - indeed it was the only reason I married him. I tried many times to convince him to walk away from me and my family - I told him directly that I was worried he wouldn't be able to handle it. I told him to go and ruin his own life - that I did not want to be responsible. But he was so persistent. He wanted it all he said - the good, the bad, the ugly. My goodness, he got exactly what he asked for.

How can I be so merciless to a man who gave it all up to see us through this tragedy? Why am I so angry? It is so unfair. I know this. But a wall literally springs up between us when I see his slow shuffle or hear the sadness in his voice. I don't want this again. I don't want to love someone who will never come back and I would rather walk away from it then watch it happen again. I see my Father in those eyes - the big man who fell to his death in such a horrible way. I think to myself that I could not make it through another. I could not ever bear that kind of pain. So I do not feel. At all. I will not share my husband's burden. What will he think of me when he pulls through this? How will he look at me in good times knowing I hid in the bad times? That was not what we agreed in our vows. Help me. I scream this to no one. Help these feelings to just go away. The one person who can help me through this is sinking. Ironic. Tragically ironic.