The Letter I Need You to Read

I’m fairly open in this space, sharing my heart and feelings even when they’re not pretty. There are still a few things I hold close and don’t talk about often. Not because of fear or hiding, but for reasons like processing and protecting and privacy.

Today, I am going to share something that is deeply personal and raw because there is no other way to talk about mental illness.

A Letter to My Brother With Mental Illness

Dear Brother,

I miss you. I really do. I know you are not far and I can see you whenever I want, but it’s not the same. You’re not the same.

I’m not the same.

Mental illness has changed everything. It came in quiet, a current we didn’t even feel sweeping us out. We kept swimming, kept living life, unaware of the little things that warned us along the way. And now we’re left looking at the shore in the distance wondering how to get back to the sand.

We’re caught in a riptide and we can’t get out.

No one is coming to help.

So we tread water hoping to stay alive, hoping it’s enough to keep our face above the waves. Medicines and doctors and therapists and police and ambulance rides come in to save us, but only leave us with more questions, more worry.

It’s strange that we could be alone with so many people in your head. Sometimes I wish they were real just so we’d have people there with us. People who were in it with us. But then I realize how crazy I sound and crazy isn’t a good word to use when I’m the stable one.

Sometimes being stable sucks.

• 

I look at your fourteen-year-old self and wish I had taught you how to swim better, how to swim out of these currents that keep dragging you down. There are some currents for which we are no match because mental illness is a beast.

Even the words are hard to say. And when I finally got used to saying them they became harder to understand. Now there is a face with the label and the two don’t make sense together.

You should know this is never what I wanted for you. I look at you and still see those big brown eyes from a thousand yesterdays ago. The ones that looked so scared coming to live in a new home. It was not always easy, but you found your place. When you finally smiled it changed not only your face, but mine because I couldn’t help smiling in the light of that beauty.

I miss that smile.

It hides deep under a mask, the latest drug cocktail numbing your face. For as much broken glass as we’ve picked up, the thing I wish would break would be that mask. Though they say it’s the only thing we’ve got holding us up right now.

At least I know you’re safe today. Safe in a locked building behind locked doors for your locked brain. Everything locked tight in an effort to keep your physical self safe. But none of this feels safe.

And tomorrow everything could change.

If mental illness taught me anything, it’s that you never know what to believe. Emotions can change so fast you get whiplash and the bounce back from hospitals is almost as fast. I don’t know who this version of you is, and the truth is I don’t like him very much.

Still, I’m here with you. It may not always seem that way in the middle of this riptide. I couldn’t hold you anymore because we were both going down in a mess of panic, but I’m still here. You are not alone.

You never were.

You never will be.

It may be harder to see me. I may not let you grab on as tight, but it’s only because I need to breathe, too. I back away so you won’t be alone. I only wish you could see that.

No matter where the current takes us, you are my brother, and you are loved.

Always,
Your Sister

This letter has also appear at The Mighty and The Mudroom Blog.

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