I just got back from eating lunch with one of my brothers. I have three. We get on each other’s nerves at times, but we love each other.

During the lunch, I touched the periphery of my mental illness in our conversation. He recoiled a bit, like all my brothers do when I bring it up. Up until today, I always took this as them being cold, distant, and uncaring.

But today, with almost a month of sobriety and 93 days into the ketogenic diet, my vision is clearer. Maybe they don’t recoil because they are cold, but because they care so much. My deep psychological pain is something they don’t know how to handle.

Like a hot coal out of a fire, they want to drop it as fast as they can.

When Pain Looks Like Indifference

This epiphany is the reason I’m writing. I didn’t know my suffering hurt them so much. I just thought they were being assholes. I thought they had written me off as mentally ill, a complainer, and someone who just needs to suck it up.

It’s their love that makes it hurt so. It’s like hot fire in their hearts. A pain that they will do anything to stop.

I get that. I’ve had pain that I didn’t know what to do with. That’s why I had addictions. I searched the globe for a way to rid myself of it.

As a master’s student in social work, I am going into a realm whose primary mission is to help with this exact issue.

How do you resolve pain so deep and entrenched that someone would do anything to run away from it?

Moving Through the Storm

Understanding why my brothers react to my suffering will be freeing, I think. I won’t get as mad when they have this knee-jerk reaction.

Who doesn’t immediately take their hand off of a surface that burns them? Who willingly sits with that level of agony when it’s so easy to back away from it? From the heat and pain of it.

I think I understand now.

If I am really honest, I want to have the same reaction to pain like that. But I have had over a decade of training in therapy that taught me not to run away from the pain but move through it. To let it wash over me like a storm.

Because what I have learned is that no storm lasts forever.

Not even hurricanes.

To My Brothers

Having to see a brother go through hell is horrible. It would tear me up if any of my brothers went through anything close to what I did.

I’m not mad, not anymore. Just heartbroken as my powers of clarity allow me to see the truth.

I don’t know if any of my brothers will read this. I seem to doubt they will. But if one of them does, I want to say this:

I’m sorry I was so angry at y’all. I’m sorry I have a mental illness that has hurt my whole family. I tried to rid myself of this, but I can’t. I can only manage it.

I love you all. Thank you for being there in the way you could, and I hope I continue to get better.

What I Will Remember

Pain can make people, me included, do things that seem cruel and unusual. But for the person in pain, it seems like the most logical conclusion.

Next time my brothers do something that seems callous, I will remember their pain.

It’s not an excuse to be an asshole, but it could be the cause for their behavior.