One of the things that I noticed about my brother was that he took an unusual amount of personal effort to worry on the fact that my income would not be what HE was once accustomed to it being. As for ME? I didn’t give a rat’s tail. I just didn’t. I told my brother in these exact words.. “When I worry then YOU worry and since I am NOT worrying.. there is no need for YOU to worry”. Did he listen? absolutely not. Oh how I really wished he had.

During the time after Bootcamp & Co. I went to work for a very nice company that imported and sold Cheese as a receptionist. I was pleasantly surprised that I was in a much healthier environment where not only was the stress level like next to ZERO but the head of the company went out of his way to praise my work ethic and all that I did for them. Verbal praise directed to me “directly” was something I had lacked for 10 years. Apparently I did a good job but everyone else but me heard about it.

(At this time I also went back to college and started towards the continuation of my Bachelors degree – which I can tell you that I now have and that I am currently working on another..)

What was my brother doing?? .. he continued at his job, while worrying about my job or more specifically my halved income.

It was around this time that he started to drink with constancy. I don’t think that my change in job was the specific cause of his drinking, but, I whole heartedly feel that it just gave him the further impetus to say “screw it, I hate myself and my life” and go full steam ahead with using drink as a coping mechanism. He was going to have a pity party and nothing that myself, his small niche of friends nor his self-proclaimed religious excellency was going to stop him from escaping from what he called “lonely life”.

So since this blog is honest, my brothers first drink of choice was Vodka and that made him almost unbearable to me. Once he drank he took on a whole different persona.

Drinking made my brother act like a human chameleon. He was one way outside of the home. A different way when home and not drinking (he was actually really helpful to my Mom with numerous things in tremendous ways!) and he was a different person once he secluded himself up in his room with his computer and his drink of the evening.

I didn’t like knowing he was drunk in the next room to me. I would hear him talking loudly and quite crazily to his other delusional friends on the phone. He would also play his computer loud and refuse to lower it when I asked him nicely. I eventually took to wearing noise muting earphones – the type you use when you cut wood or work outside!

I really disliked it when he was home and I was home studying for college. I would go the extra mile to get my work done ahead of time just to be out. But on the not so rare occasion when I had to be home more than one night in a row. I tried my best to avoid him. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it did not.

This is where drinking and mental illness specifically psychotypal personality disorder come together in an earth shattering collision course. While my brother was not professionally diagnosed with this disorder, I was able to compare his behavior with that of the definition for the disorder and come up with a positive correlation to explain his behavior.

You may ask how did you do that Susie? Well, my brother wrote diaries and he has a diary for every year from 1999 – 2009 and I have read each and every line of them. This is how I know.

This is the part of my story where we now hyper-jump forward in time.. 5 years.

The year is 2012 and the month is January…