Well isn’t that just effing great? Are you bloody kidding me, junegirl?! What the actual ef. God, I am so so so sorry for you and your poor under appreciated exhausted heart broken family. Your poor parents, thank god you have a twin, hopefully you two are close and thank god you have a family of your own. I’m sure you know, the steely resolve of a warrior is required and hastened from proximity to schizophrenia. The heart callous developed to live amongst them like the bare feet of Amazonian tree climbers, is a necessity to survive, without it every engagement with the elements hurts like the first time.
everything with schizophrenics seems to me, to be so unjust, they’re forgotten about in the system, they fill up jail and prison cells, and park benches, and even when they’re expressing being a harm to themselves and others there isn’t a thing that can be done short of a 5 day hospital rendezvous! I had once called a suicidal hotline and used it as a therapy session drunk one night at 23, they were so “freaked out” (rather opportunistically sought their well deserved kickback or “brownie point” and felt my regales of yesteryear justified) tracking me down for THREE DAYS and once they found me they took me against my will for a 72 hour hold at the hospital for a psychological evaluation which didn’t come until the third freaking day in the form of a husky, chaps with fringe wearing Harley Davidson riding broad who asked me if I wanted to “hurt myself or others” and was dismissed hours later because slackers exist in all fields of all professions and i was forgotten about…
My brother is schizophrenic too and I typically occupy two houses of opinion and feeling for him, either I think he’s demonically possessed and I feel sorry for him or I think he’s demonically possessed and I want to disappear him with my bare hands. He’s on medication, but he smokes pot which metabolizes the antipsychotics faster causing him to hallucinate rendering the medication redundant, but it’s good he’s on it, I guess? It was court ordered a couple years ago after my mother discovered he was defecating into those paper-thin produce bags. One day, after weeks of thoroughly cleaning the house, searching for what smelled like raw sewage, she discovered a collection of plastic bags under the porch. he’d been haphazardly carrying these bags through the house the long way to avoid detection, baptizing maximal square footage of house with prized piss and dumps of a raving lunatic. This weeks long saga of “what’s that smell?” Was my family’s version of winning the lottery, and my mom could cash in her winning ticket by calling emergency services to extract my brother, the goose that laid, what he thought were, his golden eggs. The only way to get peter into the hospital and then seen by a judge was first to take him to jail, if the system made sense maybe the system would work, but it doesn’t work and it doesn’t make sense. The police knew what the situation was, this is standard procedure. He wasn’t going through a psychotic episode, which was explained, he was a biohazard, mentally ill, sure but a biohazard and not a physical threat to police or himself. The police went around the side of the house to the wrong “front door” even though clearly the door every human uses is the door nearest to where they parked their car. And before my mother answered the door when they were outside she heard they said he was “rabbitting” which means “making a run for it” which made NO SENSE because he was in the kitchen. This “validated” my mom answering the door with this jackass piece of shit cop’s gun drawn on her, screaming at her to put her hands on her head. My then 60 year old mother, who has severe PTSD from an escaped-convict home invasion she was the victim of in her twenties was messed up having an episode for over two weeks from this cowardly cop. Regardless, you shouldn’t be a bloody cop if you’re so chickenshit you need your weapon drawn to knock on someone’s door when you’re picking up a sick guy for taking dumps and pees in produce bags, I mean, for fucks sake. Sorry for the language, I don’t think I will ever get over that….
Im sorry to blather on, I think I got carried away, but if there’s any resource I find in my constant research on this topic that I think would help you, I’ll post it here.
I feel so much for you and I’m so sorry your brother robbed years of peace from your family. Thats certainly what schizophrenia does, it robs all privy to its essence any possibility of peace. At least he’s got a state sanctioned babysitter and that’s not ideal, but it’s the best we’ve got until a real rewriting of the system is done…
Best of luck
Emily