Daily Insanity January 9 & 10, 2023

FIC

January 09, 2023

Daily Insanity, January 9 &10, 2023We arrived at 8:50 AM, Floor 3, Dept 1., to Henderson Municipal Court for the 9 AM court session …
The sign on the court room door said “If you have court @ 9 AM, have a seat outside” The 8 AM session was running long…
A gentleman was walking around, taking the names of the people sitting outside, he takes Brother’s name, plus a few others, then he turned to all of us, and said …“You guys drive me crazy!” and walks away … hmmmmm … The only thing we have done is given him our names… pretty sure we were not the ones driving him crazy, but probably the couple hundred cases that had come before us… He was having flashbacks… I get it … but it irritates me … I’m having my own flashbacks of getting blamed for shit I didn’t do …
When he comes back to run over the case with Brother, he does not introduce himself … So, I asked him, “May I ask who are you?” … He was Austin Schneider, Henderson public attorney/defender …On the car ride over, I had told Brother to plead guilty and apologize… Brother is in court because when he was in the Henderson Hospital psych ward, he got very angry at the staff and threw a remote at the TV and kicked the door, breaking the latch… Brother knew that he had broken the TV and the door… He had had a court date that he missed because he was still in the hospital … There had been a warrant out for his arrest. Brother had been ranting about this warrant and the court date for weeks while he was in the hospital, but I wasn’t sure if it was real or not, because he always makes shit up… Turns out it was real!When the warrant notice arrived in the mail, Brother insisted he was not going to do anything about it. They could arrest him if they wanted, but he was not going to pay them a dime … he was still VERY pissed off. He felt he was violated somehow by the staff, and it made him extremely angry … more angry than usual …
I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I know those people make me angry many times, so I feel for my Bro … but that doesn’t mean he can break a TV and/or a door either, for that matter …If a bond was not posted for the warrant, he could be picked up, a.k.a. arrested, at any time… He does exhibit strange behavior, all the time, that he could get picked up for and then all the work we had put into balancing him out, with his meds, would be lost once again… I’m talking several months here … Very discouraging … so I went to my cash stash and got the money for bail and posted the bond on Nov 30… that’s how we got this court date …So, when I mentioned he should plead guilty, he got angry again … Whatever happened at Henderson Hospital that night, is emblazoned on his soul… He angrily said “No, I’m not pleading guilty” … I then told him that if he decided to take that route, he’s on his own, and he can get his own rides to court and do his own process, because I’m not going to be drug through all of that bullshit just because he’s stubborn… the fact is, he did break the door latch and the TV … he needs to claim responsibility for it, and pay for it. He can do what he wants, but he will not have my help if he decided to plead not guilty and go for more court action over the matter …So, Austin gives us the deal that Henderson Hospital is offering… Only the door latch is mentioned on the paperwork, it’s $100 restitution if he pleads no contest, a.k.a. guilty, and waves his rights to a trial… For some reason Brother thought it was going to be $7000 … in his head he had built it up to be much bigger than it actually was… He started to soften …Austin asks who I am in this whole situation … I tell him I am his sister, and that Brother is a psych patient… I could see on Austin’s face, a softening, and a better understanding of the situation … He knew I was there to help… He then says we could go another route … He starts to explain … Brother said, “let’s just get this over with …” but then Brother reiterates that the hospital staff violated him … he hangs his head which makes my chest tighten, because I know something went on that really disturbed him … You never know what actually happened, but he is obviously still so upset about it, that he is visually shaken … This always hurts my heart … he has been abused many times in hospitals and he has horrendous scars to prove it, both on the inside and the outside, he is having his own flashbacks …
Austin asked how Brother wanted to plead … Brother said “My sister wants me to plead guilty …” Austin said “you think about it … I’ll be back… “When Austin returns, Brother says again “Let’s just get this over with, I’ll agree with the terms … “We finally head into court …The honorable Judge Alicia A. Albritton was presiding …Brother is always very respectful… Yes sir, no sir, yes ma’am, no ma’am, that is his military training… I am always proud when he does that … plus, it always helps our case!$100 retribution and six months unsupervised probation… If another incident happens, he can be arrested and go to jail for 30 days… We will see what happens … it’s a crapshoot as to whether another incident will happen … with Brother, you never know what a day will bring …
As the hearing is going on, I’m trying to count how many times I’ve been to court with Brother … I am counting at least a dozen times … Maybe more …We get through the hearing with no issues … Thank God! However, the issues are about to start …We go downstairs to pay the restitution and to sign up for the probation … we are called to window 3, Miss Alicia tells me I cannot be up there at the window with him… it makes me want to cry, I’m so frustrated … I am thinking in my head ‘Trust me, honey you want me here’ … I tell her he is a psych patient and that he will not understand anything if I am not there, which is the truth … But I intuitively know things can go sideways super quick. This all gives me a pit in my stomach, a sinking feeling of helplessness …Now this can typically go two ways … The clerk could be helpful, or she could turn into a bitch… Thank you God, she was helpful… She turned to the clerk next to her to discuss the situation and a form was provided that would authorize me to be at the window with him… which was right on time, because what happened next could possibly have landed him back in jail …Keep in mind Brother is still extremely angry that he had to plead no contest, because in his mind, he was not guilty … they MADE him do it … The hospital staff made him get so angry that he had to act out… That is what is going on in his mind… It was not his fault, it was theirs … plus the clerk is very pretty, and he typically turns on himself and hears the voices, in his head, that will talk down to him from pretty women …My brother is severely schizophrenic and hears voices from everybody in his head … Things are not said, but he hears them being said … He hears insults being hurled at him constantly… It is torturous for him … And for me … It puts an ache in my stomach every time …As we are turning the forms back into Alicia, he angrily yells, “You don’t have to call me a turd!” She looks at him and says, “excuse me?” That is when I look at her, make a motion to my head and tell her, “He is hearing things” In a heated, loud, angry voice, he says “You are calling me a turd and a disgusting sicky … Any other bullshit you want to send my way?!”This always embarrasses me … can you imagine going through this every time you want to be with, or even DON’T want to be with, your brother somewhere? If every time you’re in public this occurs? … It’s my reality.Once again, thank God for this cool, collected, young woman … She totally ignores him, and just goes about explaining the paperwork to him … Thank you Jesus I was there to avert the situation by letting her know what was going on … it very easily could’ve escalated into so much more … I always tend to touch Brother’s back when he gets angry and somehow this seems to calm him down a little bit … Grounding him to earth … Grounding him to love …We leave the courthouse and head to lunch with our friends … Brother is quiet through the whole lunch with a big scowl on his face … I know He is hearing things … I ask him if he is ok, he just shakes his head no, he is hearing us call him a sicko again … he is hearing our friend say to him ‘Sicko. Don’t look at me’, but he won’t say anything at the time … I got that out of him after the fact … I am grateful he has learned to keep his mouth shut, because this is just another regular outing with him … As you can, imagine, outings with him are typically heavy …

We finish lunch and are driving down the road … He got upset again, “You never listen to me” … he means that when he hears the voices, that people are calling him names, I tell him it’s not real & they did not call him a name … that upsets him … I still don’t know how to deal with that because I don’t want to lie to him, but it is real to him… I try to hit him with the truth, but to him it is all very real.I responded to him “Maybe you’ll have to go it alone” … he was so mad at all of us… we just want to include him, and he gets angry at us for helping. Imagine again, trying to help someone who gets mad at you on the regular … Hello Mom … Hello Brother … if he’s going to be that mad, blame me and be pissed off all the time, I can’t keep helping either … At least that’s what I told myself in the moment… The truth is, I’m committed to my brother … I won’t leave him … I will always be there for him … although, I am trying to figure out better boundaries and not have an over exaggerated sense of responsibility towards him … It is a delicate dance when someone is mentally ill … They are literally not in their right mind, so they do need help … But there’s only so much help I can give and keep myself in my right mind … it’s complicated for sure!We head to Walgreens to pick up some bandages for his feet … The VA has not sent the ones that are easy to use, so we pick up ones that work better … the VA sent a huge box of bandages that don’t even make sense to wrap toes with. Ugh!

Brother still has the scowl on his face, I lean up to him and whisper to him, “I love you no matter what …” I can see he is having a hard day and I was starting to feel some compassion for him … we were both tired as we had to get up early to get to court; we are NOT morning people … also, had not had a good breakfast before we went in … I had brought some emergency cookies to snack on, just in case, good thing I did or we, and everyone around us, would have been royally screwed!!

Brother hears the clerk say something … Brother exclaims “excuse yourself!!” … In the car he tells me “He called us crumbs, can you imagine the nerve of that guy calling us crumbs” he mentioned it several times on the way home …We get home, I redo the bandages on his feet … We had canceled the home health care nurse for the day because of court … And besides, I wanted to see what the feet look like, and take more pictures of them and their present state … They are getting better slowly, but surely …Brother was falling asleep on the couch while I was tending to his feet … He just seemed so vulnerable … like a little child as he dozed on the couch … I feel immense love for him in that moment … I love my brother so much … I will not abandon him …He wakes a moment from dozing, looks at me and says, “I am so tired these days, I am not sure how I am going to keep going …”I reply, “One day at a time … just keep doing it one day at a time … ”I am totally worn out too … not just from today, but from a year and a half of this with him and the preceding decades before this, I could seriously nap for a year and MAYBE catch up on how exhausted I am … I went home and napped for a couple of hours. Another day shot on taking care of my brother …I do feel this is God’s will, that I help take care of my brother, so the day was not shot, but my human self tells me that … That I want to be doing what I want to do… Not taking care of a big 56-year-old, 6-foot, 350 pound child … and yet I do … And I will keep doing it … Until I’m done doing it …As I am drifting off to sleep, I remember sending up prayers … Nothing specific … More like groans and utterances, that the Holy Spirit had to discern for Himself, to help my brother and the situation … there’s a verse in the Bible that says that … When you don’t know what to say, just groan, and the Holy Spirit will interpret your heart felt utterance … (Romans 8:26)
I woke up the next day and did get some work done in the morning, but was still exhausted, so I slept for another four hours in the afternoon … I decided I needed to write this whole story up, so I was in the middle of doing just that when I got a call from my brother …This is what came out of his mouth …QUOTE:I want to apologize for yesterday …Inside there was nothing but terror I held for everyone … I was bad at lunch,I didn’t want to admit I was wrong (in court) or pay that fine …I thought there was no hope … but I am finding that there is hope …
God is a good God …
I wasn’t going to talk to anyone ever again last night …My care giver came and lightened things up …I cleared up my messy heart …I’m glad things worked out the way they did …God is amazing … you can totally blow it and he forgives you …Got to keep the faith … keep believing …(Well said brother … well said …)
I am going to stop going out and smoking … save some money … I have to grow up myselfUNQUOTE …My mouth pretty much dropped open, and I knew I was witnessing a miracle… The product of prayer … having a good God doing His thing in my very midst …This remains the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life … Taking care of my brother in his extreme mental illness … the pit in my stomach returns when I talk about and write about this stuff … mental illness tortures everyone involved … It’s chronic … It’s devastating … But, somehow, there are bits of hope that I cling to along the way they keep me going … and I will keep going as I feel it is a calling higher than myself … a calling straight from God to help out my sick Brother … I will do it until he, or I, pass … Or until God somehow makes other plans, I will know, as I know my Shepard’s voice because I talk to Him daily … He will let me know when it is time to move on … until then, I will keep taking it one day at a time, with Love, as best I can …