Pearls of Wisdom and Foolish Mutterings

Time to Grow Up

My brother is forty-nine years old this year. The reason this is significant is because for forty-nine years, more or less, I have been in the business of defending him, taking care of him, bolstering his self-esteem and, essentially, doing whatever I could to make his life better. I've also spent a large amount of that time either worried, terrified or depressed because of him.

We grew up in the same dysfunctional home and neither of us had a fairytale childhood. I was his defender then and I never laid that responsibility down. As my brother (we'll call him M.) and I grew up and began making choices on our own, we chose different paths. I chose the road that would take me as far as possible from the life my parents lived; the path that M. chose anchored him not only to that life, but also to the pain that accompanies it. The life my brother has lived up to this point has been filled with heartache and failure; he has known few successes and even fewer happy times.

Over time, I have wondered what made the difference. Why did I choose to rise above my upbringing, so to speak; while M. set his life's path on self-destruct and stubbornly refused to veer from that decision? I don't have an answer to that question, not one that satisfies me. For years at a time, M. and I went through periods of sporadic communication, as each of us lived our separate lives. It was easier for me during those times, to imagine that M.'s life was improving, that he was making better choices. Always those illusions were shattered by calls from my dad with news of M.'s latest crash-and-burn. I would then monitor (through phone calls with my dad) M.'s climb back up to a semblance of "normal" life.

I was content to leave M. and his family under the watchful eye of our dad during those years. It was less painful to watch from a distance and I chose to believe that "no news was good news." My dad had the unenviable position of being M.'s keeper. On occasion, I would call M., or he would call me, and we would talk as we had when we were kids, with M. telling me his version of the events that had wrecked his life, things that had been done to him, and all the reasons why his life was so out of control. I listened, encouraged, cajoled, provided answers and did my damnedest to rescue him, always convinced that I could save him.

I remember the panic I felt when my dad died four years ago and I realized that it would now fall to me to pick up the pieces the next time M. crashed and burned. As panicked as I felt initially, I faithfully began the process of becoming M.'s caretaker.Although he had been married for over twenty years, and had two grown sons who lived with him, I was the one they all turned to when a problem arose, just as they had turned to my dad for all those years. How was it possible, I wondered, that the level of dysfunction in my brother's family was even greater than that of our own family's during our childhood?

Against the advice of my husband, I took an ever-expanding role in the "care and feeding" of M. and his family. The more I gave, the more they took. My efforts to show M. that life had different answers than the ones he had found so far, only caused him to cling ever tighter to the drama he was accustomed to. As a result, I found my self-assigned job of caretaker to be an ever-tightening noose around my neck. Determined to "save" my brother, I became the poster-child for co-dependent behavior. As M. clung to the helping hand I had extended, I wasn't able to pull him up. Instead, he pulled me deeper into the craziness that had ruled my childhood.

I'm learning, slowly, that no one can help my brother except my brother. As much as I want his life to improve, I can't want it for him. I have to let go. I can't be the one with all the answers; I don't have his answers. I do good to have my own answers on a semi-regular basis. I'm learning to stop being his rescuer, but it doesn't come naturally.