In fact, if you had asked me before 2016 if my brother and I were even friends the answer would be a big fat resounding no from both of us. I was the older, controlling, easily annoyed sister, and he was the hyper-active, never listening, easily annoying younger brother. To say we butted heads would be a lie. It was more like our heads sword-fought, tried to drown each other, were in an all out war with each other at all times.
Of course, you can’t really tell people you don’t even like your brother enough to be considered friends after he tries to end his life.
Having a sibling try to die by suicide would be hard enough for anyone, but there’s an extra strange sort of dissonance that comes along with it when you and the aforementioned brother don’t really like each other very much. Even writing this out makes me feel guilty. Most people would never even think of talking about their closest family like that, let alone their sibling, but I’ve always prided myself in being truthful and there’s nothing more true than the rift that ran right in between my brother and I for most of our lives. No, not even a rift, a canyon is probably more like it.
I don’t know if this disconnect between us was because of my own things, like my need for control or my lack of carefreeness, or what have you. Or if it was because, yeah, he was annoying and in your face and anybody else would be frustrated too. But either way it doesn’t matter because it was there. I spent most of my life in this negative space when it came to my brother – a space that was full of resentment and annoyance and yeah, even a little bit of hatred – that when suddenly he was standing on train tracks and being hospitalized and finding all sorts of ways to hurt himself and end his life, I felt like I was getting whiplash.
I already had a strange relationship with fairness in regard to my brother, even before everything happened, and it was the biggest thing that stood in the way of our relationship I’d say. I was the eldest daughter, he was the youngest son. I was the quiet, easy one who flew under the radar, and he was the one with ADHD who needed to constantly be helped and supported and shadowed in order to get things done. He was the one who’d bother me to the point of yelling, and I’d be the one in trouble for shouting. I grew up always feeling like my brother was put before me, got away with more, was shown more support than me and I can tell you that that feeling only got worse as his mental health did too.
Suddenly my parents weren’t just taking more care with him because he couldn’t find the focus to get his homework done on his own, it was because they were afraid for his life. And I was still stuck in this limbo of loathing him because I always had and because he’d given me all these reasons to, and then trying not to be the terrible sister who kicked her brother while he was down and to make the problem worse.
You can’t tell someone you hate them when they’re suicidal. You can’t tell them how annoying they are, and how frustrated you are with them, and how much you don’t like spending time with them, or how horrible a person they are when their own minds are already doing it for them.
Once again, I was in a place where anything I felt for my brother or about the situation didn’t matter. Once again, it wasn’t about me. Just like I felt it never had been, but now multiplied by a million.
And it’s not my brother’s fault, or even my parents’. They tried their best to keep everything as even and fair as they could while we were growing up, but the truth is just that my brother always needed more from them and I didn’t, and so it became a habit of mine to compare us and wish I needed more too in order to get that support from them.
Don’t get me wrong, my parents are infinitely more supportive than some of the other parents of friends I’ve encountered throughout my life, but in this particular situation, one where all their energy had to go towards keeping their son alive, I had to go and find support in other places. And in the end, I think this is what helped my brother and I create the relationship we have today.
I pulled away the appropriate amount, disconnected myself from it all when it concerned something that I wasn’t able to help with anyway, started trying to see things from my brother’s perspective, and honestly, spent a lot of time away from the house for my own sake. I had a few groups of friends I spent my time with, groups where I knew I had people who had my back and could emotionally support me the way my family couldn’t at the time. I got a therapist, found solace in books and music. I took extra care with school and classes. I did the things that made me happy because – through my own previous personal experiences with my mental health, and all the things I learned about in school for psychology, and work with my therapist once I found her, and even just seeing how much it helped some of my close friends – I knew I wouldn’t be helpful with anything if I didn’t have my own mental health in check.
I did it all with permission from my parents, of course. I didn’t just go on and abandon my family in a time of need. But I did excuse myself a bit to protect my own peace, while also being a helping hand when the situation called for it.
I think this balance is important when you’re on the outskirts of something like suicide with a close family member. It’s not selfish to need for yourself while someone close to you is going through something; it’s not deserting them if you need that time for yourself to recoup and reset. I couldn’t do anything to help my brother if I was drained and frustrated and burnt out. I couldn’t emotionally support him if I wasn’t being emotionally supported myself. I couldn’t let my whole life be sucked into this blackhole vacuum of my brother’s mental health or I would never be able to get out of it. And I’d never be able to stop resenting him for it either.
So, I was kind to him, I lent a hand to him, I was there for him when he needed something, but I also made sure to “fill my own bucket” as they say, and still do the things that brought me joy and happiness during a dark time. By taking a few steps back, I was able to feel more connected to my brother since I wasn’t in the center of the hurricane anymore. I didn’t have all those negative feelings about him swirling around my head at all times anymore because I was able to be outside of it all and calm the storm myself. I gained some perspective, learned some more about myself and my family, and in the end, we were all better for it. Or I like to hope we are, at least.
In the end, my brother’s story is his to tell, to share, and to explore. All I can do is reflect upon my own journey throughout the things that have happened, and that are bound to happen, in my life and use them to shape the way I decide to live. How I hope to live. My brother’s story may be a street in my neighbourhood, so to speak, but I am the town. The city. The country, even.
It might be a piece of me, just as it is of him, but just like for my brother we are more than what did or did not do and that’s what matters.
I don’t want to say that we grew closer because of what happened – I like to think that just like all siblings, we would still have grown together to this point without him feeling the need to end his life to do it – but I do think it was part of the reason why the two of us were able to look at each other through the other’s eyes. He was able to reflect and apologize for all the things he did to me, and I was able to have an open enough heart to forgive him. And now the two of us get to experience that movie sibling dynamic we never had before, with the inside jokes and the hanging out and the blasting music in the car and singing together and the matching tattoos and the bothering our parents as a team and sending each other silly videos and taking a bullet for one another just like we deserved all those years before.
We’re not just siblings anymore, we’re friends. So much so that we joke about how crazy it is to be able to say that, how much our younger selves would never believe it. We’re not perfect or anything, not at all, but that canyon that was once there is nothing more than a pothole now. Still there, still slightly inconvenient if you come at from the wrong angle, but nothing that a little extra care and effort can’t mend.
Eli’s Place will be a rural, residential treatment program for young adults with serious mental illness. To learn more about our mission and our proven-effective model click here.
