My mother and I went down to see my brother today. Will's been staying with a friend, Isaac, south of Tulsa. Part of the episode this time is that he's been hallucinations about Daddy hurting Mom, Dad holding him at gunpoint, Dad standing over Mom with a butcher knife at her throat, Dad forcing a woman to give him a blowjob at the shop and the list goes on. There have been several altercations at the house and Daddy has filed a restraining order, naming both himself and Mom, against Will. Thus Will is living elsewhere.
So, the visit went worse than expected. He insisted that Mom drive him to the mall to go to the Apple store to get his phone fixed. Then, after they replaced his phone with a new one (kinda hard to fix a phone that's been smashed against the wall because he threw it at my mother), we had to take him to an AT&T store because his iTunes account had been hacked and he couldn't use the phone. After we got the whole phone mess straightened out, he wanted to go to Wal-Mart, where he spent $13 of his remaining $26 on a screen protector and an energy drink rather than food for the empty fridge. Then he insisted that Mom drive him to a place where he could illegally trespass across a pasture and onto the property of the business where Isaac works because Will was convinced that Isaac had gone down there to kill himself at some point because he hadn't been home in a few days, despite having told us that Isaac had left town for the weekend with his girlfriend.
There were several fights, all about nothing, and then the big screaming match at the end of the day when he told Mom that she could just go shoot herself for all he cared if she didn't do as he said and aid and abet his trespassing. Throughout the course of the day, I learned that the reason he hates me right now is because he thinks I hacked his gmail and iTunes accounts. Never mind the fact that I have my own gmail (three or four, in fact) and iTunes and have no use for his.
I know that he has no capacity for rational thought right now. I know that he is trapped in his own nightmares. I know that he can't tell anymore what is real and what is fantasy. I also know the truth about my father, that he would die before laying a finger on my mother and that his character is above reproach. I know that Will has pretty much taken over Isaac's home and Isaac has likely decided to hide out at his girlfriend's house until the storm is over.
I'm not sure how this whole thing is going to end up. I think that Mom is going to petition for guardianship to get him on SSI. The truth is that he'll never be able to hold a job. He won't stay on medication permanently. He gets to feeling stable, so he'll stop taking it and then it only takes something small, like the wrong kind of antibiotic for a sinus infection to upset his brain chemistry. This time it was the anesthesia when he had his kidney stones removed. Of course, losing Barbara did NOT help matters. But I digress.
Throughout this whole mess, the one thing that I've discovered is that I am not as eager as before to have children. Matt's uncle has the exact same disorder, schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, which means that the gene pool on both sides of our family runs a high risk for it. There is no way that I'm risking passing it on. It would be different if it was just in my family. I'm normal, even if I tend to be depressed occasionally, so the chances of me passing it on are lower than if I had the disorder. But with it being a generation away from Matt, that changes the landscape. And I don't like the view.
So, the visit went worse than expected. He insisted that Mom drive him to the mall to go to the Apple store to get his phone fixed. Then, after they replaced his phone with a new one (kinda hard to fix a phone that's been smashed against the wall because he threw it at my mother), we had to take him to an AT&T store because his iTunes account had been hacked and he couldn't use the phone. After we got the whole phone mess straightened out, he wanted to go to Wal-Mart, where he spent $13 of his remaining $26 on a screen protector and an energy drink rather than food for the empty fridge. Then he insisted that Mom drive him to a place where he could illegally trespass across a pasture and onto the property of the business where Isaac works because Will was convinced that Isaac had gone down there to kill himself at some point because he hadn't been home in a few days, despite having told us that Isaac had left town for the weekend with his girlfriend.
There were several fights, all about nothing, and then the big screaming match at the end of the day when he told Mom that she could just go shoot herself for all he cared if she didn't do as he said and aid and abet his trespassing. Throughout the course of the day, I learned that the reason he hates me right now is because he thinks I hacked his gmail and iTunes accounts. Never mind the fact that I have my own gmail (three or four, in fact) and iTunes and have no use for his.
I know that he has no capacity for rational thought right now. I know that he is trapped in his own nightmares. I know that he can't tell anymore what is real and what is fantasy. I also know the truth about my father, that he would die before laying a finger on my mother and that his character is above reproach. I know that Will has pretty much taken over Isaac's home and Isaac has likely decided to hide out at his girlfriend's house until the storm is over.
I'm not sure how this whole thing is going to end up. I think that Mom is going to petition for guardianship to get him on SSI. The truth is that he'll never be able to hold a job. He won't stay on medication permanently. He gets to feeling stable, so he'll stop taking it and then it only takes something small, like the wrong kind of antibiotic for a sinus infection to upset his brain chemistry. This time it was the anesthesia when he had his kidney stones removed. Of course, losing Barbara did NOT help matters. But I digress.
Throughout this whole mess, the one thing that I've discovered is that I am not as eager as before to have children. Matt's uncle has the exact same disorder, schizoaffective disorder bipolar type, which means that the gene pool on both sides of our family runs a high risk for it. There is no way that I'm risking passing it on. It would be different if it was just in my family. I'm normal, even if I tend to be depressed occasionally, so the chances of me passing it on are lower than if I had the disorder. But with it being a generation away from Matt, that changes the landscape. And I don't like the view.
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