Siblings + Depression (Pt. 1)

I came home for the summer just in time to see my younger
brother graduate from high school.

The experience for me was, for lack of a better word, weird. On one hand, I was incredibly proud, of course, of this young man that I have seen grow up from birth. I remember him being small enough to hold in my arms and now he’s taller than me and has a raspy bass in his voice. I think back on the times I was so annoyed with him for following me around or copying the things he saw me do. I see how despite those times I’ve still managed to influence who he is in small ways. More so, I see my mother and my grandfather in him. I recognize the acceptance he has in the fact that his father won’t be at his graduation and how he’s at peace with that. I wish I’d been granted that same sense of acceptance.

More than anything, I found myself feeling incredibly nervous and I couldn’t fight this feeling of anxiety.

Despite the fact that I will argue until I’m blue in the face that I was treated COMPLETELY different and held to an almost unattainable standard as the first child that to this day I resent, I took being an older brother very seriously. I don’t know if it was the way in which my grandmother tasked me with being a good role model or if it was because I knew from firsthand experience how shitty growing up without your father could be but I was determined to make sure I was always there for him. If I did a good job of that or not is something that has legitimately kept me up at night.

I’m sure this nervousness I’m feeling has less to do with whether or not he’s prepared for college and being an adult (although, he hasn’t made the best case for himself and I am a tad relieved he’s staying home for school) and more with myself and numerous issues. I remember being where my brother is. I was bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and underestimated the mountain in front of me that was being on my own and going to college. I was one part overconfident and one part over-competitive perfectionist and going to one of the best schools in the state has no room for either of those things so by the end of the semester I was all parts suicidal. I don’t want my brother to end up in that situation.

I know that its different for my brother because he’s not leaving home but at the time of his graduation I didn’t now that. I just had this idea of him leaving home and never coming back because that was almost my story and despite the fact that he’s made the decision he has it still gives me nightmares, him being alone and overwhelmed, because one day, he will have to leave home and I don’t know if I’ve done everything I was supposed to do as an older brother to let him know that I’m here for him. I know our family didn’t do a good enough job for me because to this day I don’t think they realize that I tried to commit suicide. The times I’ve tried to tell them it went right over their heads and my brother was there for all of those times so I don’t know how he feels about his familial support system because if he’s anything like I was, he'll feel like no one will understand what he's going through. More so, he’ll be too proud or too ashamed to tell anyone what’s wrong. I don’t know how to tell him, “Don’t be like me."

To make matters more complicated, I feel like the more I try to help him, the more I might inflict my own self-doubts onto him.

I'm afraid that I’ll break him in some way like my depression will somehow rub off on him. I feel contagious. And it’s so hard to reconcile in my mind what I’m supposed to do. Am I supposed to help him as much as I can at the risk of smothering him or becoming his crutch? Should a lay low and let him think that all of a sudden I don’t care. I have this whole tug-of-war going on inside my head and that doesn’t even take into account the fact that he has his own shit he’s probably going through, which of course I would know nothing about.

He’s so hard to gauge because he never really opens up to me anymore which I take as a failure on my part obviously. He’s such a mama’s boy so they have their secrets and this whole relationship that I’m on the outside of, looking in on which makes things that much worse because when I think about my relationship with my brother my mind always wonders to this place where I realize that my brother and my mother are a family on their own. And it’s not like how my mom and I were a family before my brother was born because he just wasn’t around but I still am. When I first moved out it was small understandable things, like dinners and movie dates that I couldn’t come to because I was in a different city. But now it’s bigger things. My mom bought a house after I graduated high school and it isn’t considered my home. I don’t even have a room. There’s a guest room, but it's not mine. I guess if anything my brother makes me feel insecure because there are all these things that I missed that he got right. His relationship with my mother and with my grandparents is much different from mine. I’m supposed to be the one teaching him things but I’m the one that still has to figure out how to exist within my family and that’s a hard pill to swallow.

I’m afraid that I’ll be stuck in my depression forever.

I’m afraid that my relationships with my family member will always exist in various stages of awkwardness. I’m most afraid that I’ll grow to resent my brother because he will always be a reminder of those things. He’s always going to be the barometer by which I assess my place in our family. Its like he embodied so perfectly what my family wanted in a son and grandson and I’m trying to find a balance between being myself and cutting off the edges that don’t fit into this mold he was made from.

I just want to feel like a big brother and not like a fuck up.

What could I possibly have to teach my brother about life when he seems like adequately prepared for it? What do I tell him about how to get on Mom’s good side when he’s always already there and always has someone on her bad side to distance himself from? More specifically how do accept the fact that I was the first pancake. You know, the one you always fuck up. How do I get passed seeing myself in that light?

Being proud of my brother sometimes brings out a self-hate and a jealousy in me.

I’ve worked so hard to unapologetically be myself but I still have insecurities I’ve yet to deal with and if I’m being honest with myself some of them have to do with the role I play in my family. Sometimes I feel I’m on the outside looking in; watching these people live their lives without me. And this might just be a normal part of moving out and away from your family that I wasn’t prepared for especially seeing as when I left home I was still very desperate for approval and acceptance from my family. I just needed, so badly, for my family to understand that I wasn’t a football player, I wasn’t straight, I wasn’t an engineer, I wasn’t going to Oklahoma University. I wasn’t a lot of the things that they wanted me to be. I probably wasn’t any of the things they wanted me to be and I needed them to be okay with that because it was hard enough trying to figure out what I wanted in life without the added pressure of disappointing the people you love most in the world. I don’t think my brother ever had that struggle and if did or is, he’s dealing with it way better than I ever did, obviously. And even the thought of that annoys the hell out of me. I just want to be happy and comfortable with who I am without compromising the support of my family. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.