I was planning on continuing where my last piece left off, recalling lessons learned from places far and times past, where men in orange robes paint their faces to resemble gods as innumerable as the stars. But then I was, in real life, hit hard with the reality of the here and now, and floored by both the obstacles faced and courage shown by people that had long ago become common to me. Well, by one person whom I have simultaneously admired and criticized, who has become a staple in my necessary diet of encouragement, but who has also humbled and questioned me on a regular basis.

My sister is trying to raise a family, but her struggle to do so has taken her over rainbows and down to hell. She has been battling my nephew’s bipolar for nearly as long as he has been with us, and everyday as he fights the demons in his head she fights to keep him grounded and in control. He has been hospitalized on numerous occasions, once even for six months. As the police took him away, at the tender age of eight, while he screamed at the surrounding delusions, I know her heart broke at the loss of innocence so premature.

That was two years ago, and now those demons, those uncontrollable fits that characterized his disease are back, and this time my sister does not even have a house in which to try to protect him. While Darren’s devils lived in his head, in his sister they found refuge in her stomach, attacking the very ability to digest her daily bread. Her food allergies skyrocketed until it became necessary to take out almost everything but the bare basics from her diet. This was hard, but not surprising as Rena’s stomach has always been sensitive. It was only when these allergies transferred to her brother and later to her mother, who had never in the past had problems of that sort did my sister know that something was truly wrong.

Then they found it: mold. It had taken over the insides of the walls and the insides of their bodies, creating a home of poison. There was no choice but to walk away from it, with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the promise of a family friend to take them in while they rebuilt. As the whole family lives in an apartment over a garage, my sister, a proud woman, counts on the daily donations of friends and strangers and the promises of free labor and materials. She is still very short, but now all that has come to halt as Darren’s demons have returned, causing him to lash out at his lot. Wednesday night, he attacked his mother, and a two-hour manic episode that left both him and Barb, his mother, bruised and battered ensued. As she fought to keep him in his room and away from his little sister, he became lost in a maniacal, dangerous hell, swinging from intense anger to crazy, scary laughter. He was crazy. He is a little better now, with an adjustment to his medication, but is still struggling to maintain control.

If there is something to gain from these experiences, and from this story, it is the intense interconnectivity of our lives. We live in a web and are only reminded of this when something terrible, such as death, illness or despair make us fall backwards, only to be caught by those around us. My sister’s very survival depends on her friendships, on the neighbors that she painstakingly forged relationships with when she first moved into the house, before everything fell apart. Perhaps this is the most important lesson one can ever hope to learn. When things are falling apart, such as they are now for so many, we must remember to look to our left and to our right, at the people who both support us and need us for support. Thousands of books and movies have rung this tune, and nearly every religion that I have encountered use interconnectivity as their cornerstone, yet we still don’t seem to really have grasped it. We believe, for some reason, that a butterfly flapping its wings can start a hurricane, but we are shocked when a bad decision made by an executive means you losing your job, or, conversely, that when you do something nice for someone, like text them quickly to tell them that you are thinking about them, it can completely make that person’s day. I’m telling these very personal details about the struggles of my family because I want to get a message across; that when the present and future look bleak, it’s the little things that will matter. Individualism is what got us into most of the messes we find ourselves in, and only other people can save you from yourself.

No related posts.