You know, I had all these plans to put all these posts up about pretty much everything that's going on in my life, but after the events of yesterday, there's just the two subjects for now.
I haven't been able to post recently, due to family crises (yes, I spelt that right!). One of them is my mum, who was seriously ill for the first time I can remember and the other is my sister. It's my sister I want to mention today.
This sister (one of four I have - yes really) suffers from a depressive type illness. Like most depressive illnesses, this affects her life (and I should know - I've been there too) and those around her. For those people not in the know, depression makes you view the world in a totally different way to everyone else. It can be that you just don't feel happy; for others it's extremes of emotions, for others it's a total absence of. Some people just hate not being able to totally engage with the world (meaning people etc). Most people who try to end it all just don't want to continue to feel the way they do - they just want it to stop. The other problems with the illnesses are the paranoia, the irrational and extremes of behaviour.
In our position, I have to deal with difficult relatives who either won't admit she has a problem or do, but disagree on the best treatment. Then you have her friends, who won't help "manage" her and keep her off any stimulants (and help keep her out of trouble). Then we also have their attitude to drug intervention of the legal sort. And then there's the problem of trying to get her to see a doctor. There's three of us who see sense on this, but for every step we get forward we go three back. It's not just about managing this either; it's also about trying to ensure she doesn't throw her degree away and about keeping her home environment stable (as she's not at home). I have been doing my best to deal with a difficult and ill individual, but living with people with this type of illness and trying to both help them and get them to help themselves is tricky at best and downright impossible at worst.
Yesterday, I received a text message from her. As out mum is away, younger sister thought she would come and collect some of her belongings (Unfortunately she left most of them behind). I was then the one who got all the abusive text messages when she couldn't find something. Not surprisingly, after the recent stresses, I finally lost my temper and said she was making it really difficult to sympathise with her, try to help her and also represent her interests to the family if you will. So she told me not to bother. She also wouldn't answer the phone.
I then phoned one of our mutual friends to let her know what was going on and, basically, to say that I'd had enough.
And I feel terrible. I feel I've truly done an awful thing by saying I can't take it any more and essentially dumping the problem onto someone else. Worse yet, this has brought back an awful lot of very bad memories from when I was unwell myself and I was behaving in a similar manner. It's only now that I can appreciate just why so many people washed their hands of me. I had repaid their kindness and friendship with aggression, paranoia and being a complete liability. In essence, I was not myself and I put them through too much, just like my sister is doing now. I don't blame them however. No one should ever be blamed or have their committment to friendship questioned because they admit to not being able to handle any more tricky behaviour. Mental illness is always best handled by the professionals. I've had an outlet this time and I've made sure my sister's friends have the appropriate numbers as well. We also meet togther regularly to give ourselves a break. But everyone is human and everyone has limits to how much they can tolerate.
I was known as the crazy girl for a reason and I've been to several shades of hell and back. It is only now that I understand just how tough I must have been to take and how awful I feel about not having said sorry. If there was a way I could take back everything that happened I would, but there's not and I have to live with what happened and just try not to let my sister destroy her life and family relationships the way I did mine.
On a lighter note, I made a new friend yesterday, who told me about the local Mormons doing door to door - much to my surprise they showed up on my doorstep last night. Being the hospitable girl I am, I invited them in and fed and watered them, and while talking to them remembered something else this new friend said to me: She told me that from now on I may be the only Jew anyone meets and that I have to always be aware of my behaviour, because this is how others could judge allJews. A sobering thought. It also made me realise how much I have to learn and learn to deal with so that I can know what I'm talking about! I already get lots of questions asked of me that I can't answer just yet, but it's good to be making friends my own age within my own community, because now I don't feel quite so much like an outsider.