She sat on the couch unable to move, with a blank stare on her face that seemed to be able to block out everything around her. It was the same every day for as long as I could remember, giving it a sense of normalcy in my mind. I’m not sure if this was because I was too young to understand what was going on, or rather that I didn’t want to understand. Four months before, my sister had to drop out of school because it was too difficult for her to leave the house each morning. Instead, she got a tutor who came for a few hours every day after my parents were finally able to get her out of bed. Months dragged on and she seemed to be growing more and more distant from any kind of personality. She was a hollow body that had replaced my once lively and playful sister.
Even after her suicide attempt, I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought that she went to the hospital because she was sick with the flu or some sort of illness along those lines. However, she was much more aware of the damage that was being done than I was because she came to my parents to tell them that she needed to get away from home in order to get better. This is when my parents decided to send my sister to both a therapeutic wilderness program in Utah and then a therapeutic boarding school in Montana.
“Why do you have to leave?” I remember saying as tears streamed down my face and I held my knees tightly to my chest in one of the chairs of the dining room.
“Because I need to learn how to be a better big sister,” she said as she kissed the top of my head before walking out the front door with my dad.
That was the last time I would speak to her for about six months.
My brother’s rock bottom looked much different than my sister’s. For months he had been on a multitude of different drugs. It was hard to remember what he was like sober anymore. He figured out a way to rewire our alarm system so that one of the doors in our house could be opened without setting off the alarm. Every night he would leave the house to get high with friends and then show up back at home to figure out which prescription drugs he had to sell that week. He began to spiral out of control. I think that he was just as unrecognizable to himself as he was to others, but he still didn’t see that he needed serious help.
The night of my brother’s prom, my mom and I went to my grandparents’ house in Connecticut while my dad stayed at home. The plan was for my brother and my dad to come up the next day and meet us but little did I know, two men from the wilderness program came in the middle of the night to take my brother to Salt Lake City, Utah for a seven-month-long therapeutic wilderness program. When my dad showed up the next day without my brother, I was told once again that another one of my siblings had left. I knew that I wouldn’t be speaking to him anytime soon.
After he completed the wilderness program, he went on to the same boarding school that my sister was attending. This was very rare, having two siblings at the same therapeutic boarding school at the same time. It was only after my siblings made it to a certain stage in their therapy that I was allowed to speak to them on the phone, and even after that I was only allowed to talk to them a few days in the month. My relationship with both my brother and my sister was slowly evaporating before my eyes.
Both of my siblings chose to run away from their issues. My sister decided that suicide was the best choice for her, while my brother used drugs to escape whatever sort of pain he was going through. The difference between them was that my sister chose to find help for herself. Her suicide attempt opened her eyes to the life that she was leading and how little joy she would have if she continued in the way that she was. My brother, however, wasn’t ready to open his eyes to what was really going on. I think that this is why he never fully recovered.
My sister ended up graduating from the high school in Montana and going straight to college afterwards. The school allowed us to talk to one another and see each other very rarely during the two years that she attended. She was able to overcome her depression; however, instead of becoming a better big sister like she promised, we lost our relationship almost completely.
My brother ended up repeating his junior year after he completed his time in Montana at a school in North Carolina. He has always resented my parents for sending him away, and I think that in some ways he always will. I think he felt as if he had to fit into a mold of who my parents thought he was before he left and therefore he continued with his drug use and still struggles with this today.
My parents sent both of my siblings away so that they could become healthy and learn to deal with their struggles. They also sent them away so that they could have a better relationship with their family rather than only having a relationship with drugs or depression. The irony, however, is that because they were picked out of their lives completely, they never learned how to have a relationship with the people whom they love.