Little Brother

Warning – really long and pathetic post

So I still want to kill myself. And every time I think about this, I think about the reasons I shouldn’t, or why I haven’t already. And most of the time I realize I’m just living out of fear of something. Like the possibility of an afterlife. I think I overcame this. And the other major one, which I think I overcame a few months ago, is the idea of my mother mourning me. I’ve never liked it when my mother expressed her love for me (which I think is common for teenagers with low self-esteem – even though I’m 19, and should have outgrown this by now). When my suicidal thoughts were less mature than they are now, I would fantasize about how my “friends” – who I’m really not close to, but that’s all I have – would mourn, and sometimes that was a motive for me to commit suicide. I’m not in that mindset anymore – I try to focus on the idea that I won’t be able to see any of this mourning anyway. But I would enjoy thinking about my friends mourning over me, and be way too embarrassed to think about my mom mourning. It tore me apart. And I reasoned with myself: I didn’t want her to be in pain like that, I guess, but it’s not worth it to live out an entire life I don’t want just because I don’t want her to have to deal with her dead, favorite (yes I’m genuinely sure that I’m her favorite of the three, for some fucked up reason) son. And that makes sense to me and I don’t think that really stops me anymore.

But recently I think it has come to be that the main thing holding me back is my 13 year old brother. I’ll preface this real quick with some background about my family. My mom suffers from depression and has all of these mental fuck-ups. She takes a shitload of pills everyday, lives off of social security, and doesn’t really get out at all but to do therapy-type shit, or common errands like shopping or taking the bus to the bank and stuff like that. Maternally, I have an older brother – around 30, and a younger brother, both with different fathers. My mom’s pretty old, and just not in the mood to raise another teenage boy. My older brother’s life is a bit of a wreck, and the only advantage that I have over him is that I started college (be it on loans and a relatively small scholarship – as well as the feeling that there really isn’t any other option). He has also displayed some depression and expressed suicidal desires to me, even though we’re not that close. He might end up doing it. I wouldn’t be surprised.

But anyway, my older brother and I both had something of a relationship with our fathers. We knew them, and they took us off on weekends or whatever (even though I was conditioned to hate mine for a little while, because my mom didn’t really make any reservations about expressing her feelings about him around me). I apologize for this extra excerpt – everything is disorganized and I’m not going to take the time to edit it, but I think it’s important – for a long time I blamed my mom for a lot of my problems. And I guess that blame is due, but it doesn’t help anything, so I’m getting out of that habit. And it’s not like this is her choice either – she’s just mental and all.

Anyway, my little brother doesn’t have any paternal figure at all – he never met his dad. The only male influence he’s had in his life is pretty much just his two brothers. And the oldest was an adult before the little one was born, and now I’m in college. Neither of us were really grade-A role models to him, anyway.

So now anytime the consequences of my death roll across my mind, the main thing I think about is him. His life’s going to be a fucking disaster. There’s no doubt about it. I don’t care about what effect my death will have on my mom or my older brother, because my mom’s already pretty much worthless (fuck I’m really hoping she doesn’t find this website/post … she might), and I don’t even know about my older brother. But I mean this kid is 13 years old. He can get his shit together right now. He can pick up a sport, get motivated about school, develop a healthy social life. But right now he sits in his bedroom all day playing video games, doesn’t really care about school, and has a really short temper – he has some pretty evident emotional problems. And nothing about his life is going to get any better if someone doesn’t step in. I’ve thought about telling my mom to try and enroll him in a Big Brother program or something. But I mean if I go and kill myself, I’ll make shit even worse for him. My mom will fall apart so whatever parent he has is going to crumble to shit, and they’ll probably both shut down a little bit. But if I stay, and I really work to become successful, earn my degree and all, maybe I can be there for him – give him an example of what he can be, and if I establish financial stability quickly enough, maybe I can help put him through school or something.

But there’s my dilemma – I’ve already established that I don’t have the motivation to get through life and going through it just to make things easier on my mom isn’t worth it at all. So is living for my brother worth it? I mean will I even be able to be successful and be the kind of person I need to be in order to put his life on track? If I can’t do it based on my own passion for my field and personal desire to succeed, I highly doubt I will be able to with the motivation of maybe making things easier on him. I can hardly focus on schoolwork right now (I’ve spent the majority of my time lately sitting on my bed zoning out with my laptop in front of me), so I feel like using this to “drive” me on will just put something in the back of my head to make me more anxious.

And when I look at what I’m saying from some sort of a psychoanalytical perspective, I find it hard to believe that I even care about him that much. Any relationship-based emotion I’ve ever expressed has been a facade, and it holds no weight. Most of my emotions – including passion for math and engineering (I’m an ECE major), have been kind of superficial and contrived. I don’t think I truly care about anyone, and I’m using this concern for my brother as a fucking excuse to keep myself alive because my inner mind is grasping for reasons to keep on living. When I think about it this way, I feel like shit. But I felt genuine about it before I wrote this paragraph, so I don’t fucking know.

If anyone managed to be empathetic enough to read all of this and actually care about my situation (I still feel like I’m being a ***** about all of this, and my situation isn’t anything close to what a lot of suicidal people suffer through; it’s hard to feel sorry for me), I would really appreciate any kind of feedback. And I guess I apologize about all of the language. I was trying to hold back on that at first.