For the first time since I arrived in Boston about a month ago, I called home (I did send a few emails though) to say Hi to Mum, wish Brother happy birthday and to give an update on what's been happening in Boston. Brother seemed pretty happy that I called and we had a good laugh over the phone. Although Brother is a year older than me he's still living at home and is unemployed. This is due to him being mentally ill, as he suffers from 'psychosis'. Basically its the same as schizophrenia, in that he thought people were spying on him constantly, putting listening devices in the house, sending him secret messages through junk mail, TV and radio, and it got as bad as him thinking that they were controlling every facet of his life and basically the world he lived in. For a time he thought he was living in a Truman-world situation where even I was part of the conspiracy. Brother's condition is similar to the main character in A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe. It's a great film by the way and I recommend it highly.
Brother and I have always been close although less so since I moved out of home in Sydney. Still finishing his second university degree, he couldn't afford to move out and lived with my parents (that's another saga in itself). I feel guilty sometimes that I was too involved in my own messed up life at the time he was falling ill, a time frame of 3 months or so, to notice that he wasn't well. I became aware of his illness a few months after we had returned from a 6 week trip around the world, a time I'm grateful to have had with him before he got sick. We hadn't spent a lot of time together preceding that trip as I was living away and busy with my PhD, so it was a good to reconnect with him and we shared many laughs and misadventures along the way.
My sadness at Mont St-Michel as captured by Brother
During our travel it was mostly me who organized everything, but there were times when I needed the assurance and help that a big brother instinctively provides. It was Brother in the beautiful citadel of Mont Saint-Michel, France who cheered me up when for no good reason I was feeling miserable and depressed. It was Brother who miraculously located some bandages and burn cream in hot, humid Saigon, Vietnam while I lay in a air-conditioned hotel room, nursing a burn on my leg that I foolishly received from a hot motorbike exhaust. It was the same Brother who had looked out for me during our childhood, and who I looked up to as we grew up. This is now a sad memory.
Brother and me had a great time travelling, he was celebrating the end of his degree and I was getting much needed R&R from my PhD. He seemed a little quieter than usual at times but still seemed the Brother I had always known. I was wrong. Little did I know that his comments that he wasn't sleeping well during the trip would be a symptom of his developing psychosis.
Brother had always been quiet and a bit of a loner. He did have his small circle of close friends during high school but over the years he had seen them less and less, much like the case with his university friends. I'm not going to go into detail about the dreadful process of finding out that he was mentally ill since just typing this is making me tearful, but needless to say it was a massively distressing event for me and the family. The Scot, Ace, GK and Ex-flatmate have an inkling of that terribly confusing and scary day. What I will say is that seeing your own brother in basically a mental asylum is unspeakably awful.
Despite my aforementioned guilt, I take solace that he finally reached out to me to share his problems which finally led to him receiving treatment. At present he's on very strong anti-psychotic medication which has made him less irrational/paranoid but he's still not the Brother I used to know.
Despite the medication, after 15 months or so after getting treatment, Brother still denies that anything is wrong with him, insists that he doesn't suffer from psychosis, and is adamant that everything he 'experienced' was real. Now he's extremely quiet and doesn't seem to enjoy doing anything, although he is more rational than before. He spends his time watching TV, and just sitting, trying to puzzle what 'They' want him to do and what 'They' want from him, basically trying to work out what the fuck is happening to him. I'm told he'll be on medication for probably his whole life. When I think of his long-term prospects as he is now I feel a sense of despair, not just for him but for the extra burden on Mum who is obviously distressed about the whole situation, particularly because they didn't get along for many years, including the time Brother fell ill. However, I hope that gradually he'll get better and one day he'll be able to rejoin the workforce, live independently and just simply enjoy life again.
Even though you'll never read this, Happy Birthday Big Brother.
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