So, last night was pretty crazy. Jandco was kind enough to grant me permission to vent it out here right before free for all starts, so another round of thanks is in order.
Okay, where do I begin?
Some of you know based on past comments and campfires from your truly that my brother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder earlier this year, and that after a 1 month trial he decided to stop taking his meds. Since he’s long past 18, my parents can’t legally force him to go back on them.
I think I mentioned the incident with the Facebook post and the cops already in my “effing up…yeh” campfire, and the circumstances surrounding his diagnosis in the first place (if you’re wondering, just ask.). It’s pretty common for my bro to “go berserker” at least once a month. Usually whatever’s eating away inside of him builds up until finally something small sets him off and he throws a despair-filled rage—punching walls, turning over things, shouting, getting in another person’s face, etc.—.
His frustration with the fact that he couldn’t get his license to drive back until he could prove he had his own insurance, which he could only get if he had a job, was the thing that’s been building up inside of him. His job hunts have been really unsuccessful, mostly because he never completes his applications, and last night he just lost it after finding out my Dad logged out of an insurance info page he was looking at.
Usually one or both of my parents can calm him down, but last night bro went waayyyyyy off the deep end.
On top of turning over the lounge seat in the family room and the sofa in the living room, punching another hole in the wall, and having another screaming match with my parents, bro tries to strangle Dad, trying to knock his head into the wall in the process, and when he finds out Mom has called the cops, goes into the kitchen and gets one of the kitchen knives.
Meanwhile, Dad is trying to get Mom to hang up on the 911 call. He doesn’t want the cops involved and thinks they can just handle this all on their own (Mind you, I’m watching from upstairs the whole time).
He succeeds in hanging up the phone, which sets off Mom, then he tries to calm bro down. Bro is stalking around, grasping a chopping board knife, like he’s not sure what to do with it, whether to use it on himself or someone else, and my Dad gets in his face about it, but that doesn’t matter because the 911 dispatcher sends a cop to our house even though the phone was hung up. Mom answer’s the door, bro, who’s more freaked out now, gets another knife, and when he sees the officer at the door, panics and runs into the garage. The officer, who has seen my brother holding the knives immediately calls for back up and enters the house with my Mom’s permission.
A slurry of activity happens next. I join my Mom outside on the porch while the officer and my Dad try to find my bro, and somehow bro makes it upstairs to the attic to hide. More cops start showing up, we go inside, watching them, and when my Mom sees one of the cops bring with them a very large looking rifle she starts becoming hysterical (she tells me later that she was afraid that something like the Oakland BART police shooting incident might happen).
Anyway, eventually we’re able to get her to calm down, a lot of officers are going upstairs, trying to talk to my bro and all that. They get statements from my Mom and Dad, and here’s the thing that really really disgusts me: my Dad is trying to sugar coat it all. He’s trying to downplay everything. The officer wouldn’t have even known that my bro tried to strangle my Dad in the first place if I hadn’t told him.
Eventually, the officers are able to talk my brother out of the attic and downstairs to the front porch. He gets shipped off to the hospital again for another psych evaluation, strapped to a gurney.
Throughout all this…I feel unfazed. And I wonder, is THAT even normal? I mean, the concept of normal is in and of itself subjective, we’ve all heard the saying that all family’s are dysfunctional in their own way, but where’s the line between normal dysfunction and bat%^&% craziness? If you’re surrounded by chaos all the time, how do you even know what’s healthy or not anymore? I know, that sounds a bit melodramatic, but I seriously feel too calm about all of this, and I feel like I should be freaking out but I’m not.
Honestly, I feel like yesterday night was just another normal night and that worries me. Shouldn’t I be feeling something?
Thoughts?
REC:
Stregoni Benefici, by giselle-lx