Failed Suicide: A Gift
My journey to sobriety has been derailed. Yet, that is the least of my own personal problems. This entry will not be about me.
My brother sent me coordinates Friday during my work hours. It was from my brother. As a back story, he came home from Florida. He traveled there for a woman he had reconnected with from High School. I had an off feeling about her. But I wanted my brother happy and that is how he expressed himself. It turned out, after a year of time, that she was siphoning money from him… This womah had a home given to her by her parents. The home resides on a great deal of land where just a few miles away her parents had another home built for themselves. They paid for everything for this woman. She worked two jobs to save money. She expected my brother, nonetheless, to work many hours and provide further funds to her with many excuses. This woman’s mother threatened to evict her if my brother did not work. He worked the land, worked to fix both home, and worked a job requiring nearly 80 hour weeks to which he gave the money straight to the woman he called fiance. He took care of his fiance’s children as his own and began to stich up for himself. Later enough, the woman allowed her mother to force him to move into the barn on the property. He still kept his dedicated work. He poured his blood, sweat, tears, and love into this ungrateful family but was blind to it as he believed “a real man” takes on these responsibilities. At the end of things, he decided to leave this family. I offered him my home. After he made himself home once again in Michigan, his fiance told him she was pregnant and was getting an abortion. He respected her decision as “it is her right and her body”. **I would appreciate no political arguments in any comments in this part for he believed this was right despite him being upset on the matter.**
The fiance would send him voice messages of her in pain and her mother badgering her about my brother being a shitty person. It weighed him heavily and he fell to depression…
He agreed to move out as he accepted a job, saved money, and found a place with a friend to move in with.
I didn’t know things were getting so bad. I allowed my own life to get in the way.
After 6 months, he sent me those coordinate…. it felt weird. I didn’t feel right about it. But as a mediocre, bottom of the barrel therapist I thought “oh, I’m simply castrophizing. I need to defuse these thoughts”. I asked if he was okay and he said “ya, meant to send it to a friend. How are you”. I told him I was well… Silence.
It turns out he sent this to everyone in immediate family. My mother, of all people, followed her gut and found him at those coordinates. It was at (near) his regular fishing spot off Lake Erie, where I thought he meant to be to send coordinates to fish with his friends… I was wrong.
My mother found him curled into a ball on a blanket he place beneath a tree… A tree he meant to hang himself from. He hung himself from paracords. He wrapped them multiple times around his neck and yet they broke. I don’t believe in any diety but yet I found myself thanking Source Energy (what you would consider in the most basic sense of “God”). I’ve rarely ever seen someone so anhedonic. Even as a mental health professional with 10+ years in my field.
I am angry at myself. I knew, but I blew it off. I am angry it was our mother who found him- one of the sources of his trauma. He explained he only sent the coordinates for her to specifically find his body.
He was high. Shrooms, THC, and alcohol. He remembers nothing.
I kissed his forehead and hugged him tightly in the hospital. He said he did not want to be touched. My brother, who always met me with excitement and hugged me tightly I couldn’t breathe.. The one who I tried to raise as a son rather than a brother…
I am hurting. And I feel wrong for it. HE is hurting. He is on psychiatric hold. He refuses to recieve my calls. I am at a loss. I want to protect him…
I am so scared right now. I just drink and medicated and have take days of work to do so. I feel as though I failed him. I want to help him but I know I am limited.
The US health system is fucked up. I’ve always known that in this field but now seeing it from a personal perspective makes it more real. *If you have an political bullshit to put into this statement, kindly fuck off”.
Please.. Send your thoughts this way if you are reading this.. I don’t care if you believe in this or that.. just please… take your sympathy, your empathy.. your love, and send it to those who are suffering with trauma as my brother does. It is not mine to say, but he has been through such a terrible childhood and now a terrible adulthood. Please send love and hope for peace as well as healing.
I thank all who do.