Anniversary of My Brother’s Suicide Today

Yesterday was a bitch.  I was diagnosed with PTSD after a 2 week drinking binge about 2 months after my brother’s death-which ended in me going into DT’s on the floor of an AA clubhouse–I only remember bits and pieces of what happened based on what people told me but I was in bad shape.   I was 21 years old, hadn’t eaten in weeks and had scratches and welts all over my face, arms and stomach because apparently I thought there were bugs crawling under my skin.  I tried to keep it together after my brother blew his brains out but when my sister-in-law told me that the only thing my brother ever told her about our childhood was playing Russian Roulette with my father–something inside me snapped.  I had convinced myself the memories were just bad dreams:  That none of it could have happened.  It couldn’t be real–until she mentioned the Russian Roulette.  It felt like she had blown the lid off of Pandora’s box and I couldn’t stop the horrors from surfacing anymore.  I had to drink-drug-anything-to keep from going insane.  After I married and had kids and the marriage fell apart within a couple years; I found myself alone with these little boys who had no one else but me which is the only reason I am alive.  Otherwise, I would have put a gun to my head a long time ago.  The irony to me is that when my dad would make my brother and I play Russian Roulette with him-I was about 9 or 10 the first time and my brother was about 12 or 13 the first time but no matter when we played- my brother could never pull the trigger.  He would shake and cry and get hysterical-I remember him crumbling on the floor in the fetal position while my dad would beat him and call him a fag and a sissy and lots of other cruel things.  My dad would put one bullet in his 38 service revolver, spin the chamber and put the gun to his own head and pull the trigger.  My brother was always the second in line to pull the trigger and I was the last.  I remember it like it happened yesterday.  All that went through my mind was how messy it was going to be when my head blew up and if my neighbors would hear it.  I always pulled the trigger.   To this day, when I get flashbacks, I feel the steel pressed against my head even though I know it isn’t there, I smell the blood and gunpowder which makes me queasy-worst of all, I feel the part of my brother’s brain that stuck to my thumb after he blew his brains out.  I picked up a box in his room not noticing the brain stuck to it until after it stuck to me.  I still run my hands and wash them constantly as if I am trying to get it off all the time.  It has been years since my brother took his life playing Russian Roulette with a .45 magnum when he was 24 but my brain somehow meshes playing it with my dad when I was little to my brothers brains blown all  over the room when he was 24.  I went through intensive group therapy where they had me relive it one time.  I threw up, I lost my voice-I couldn’t talk for a week after that session.  Despite all the therapy-every year or every time I see, hear or smell something that reminds me of my childhood, the memories come back and cripple me.  I hate this shit…I fucking hate that it won’t go away.  I have been clean and sober many many times for many many years but it doesn’t matter because the PTSD eventually comes back and I would rather drink as go insane.  The only reason I haven’t killed myself is because I would never want  my boys to experience the pain of losing someone they love to suicide.  It is a kind of death you can never reconcile because you spend the rest of your life thinking it didn’t have to happen-that maybe you could have stopped it…you never get over it like other deaths.  When someone dies due to circumstances beyond their control-at some point, you accept it-no matter how painful.  Suicide is different.