I’ve been venting on another thread about a mentally ill brother that I now seem to be responsible for, now that our parents are past it. I don’t think I’ve ever read any stories on this board of what it’s like to be the ‘normal’ kid when there is a sick or disabled kid sucking up all the attention.
This brother of mine had pretty much destroyed an already unhappy family when he started to go mentally ill, decades ago. All our parents’ efforts and attention went to Poor Sick Baby. His wife left him and they moved him back into the house. He was arrested for drunken driving in another city, they went to pick him up in the middle of the night. He was arrested for threatening people, indecent exposure, and punched holes in their walls before they got a clue and took him to a shrink, and then they set up a cozy bed-sit in the basement where he vegetated for years until my widowed mother couldn’t handle it any more…So that meant that nothing that happened to me, nothing I did, mattered in the least. When I was in trouble, when I was ill, no one cared. After all, what did I have to complain about, I should just thank my lucky stars I didn’t have Poor Sick Baby’s problems! When I moved out of the cuckoo’s nest, I was just about spat upon for deserting them and Poor Sick Baby. Graduation: none of the immediate family showed up. When I got engaged, when I was planning a wedding, no one cared. So we eloped, and their reaction: huh - well, you and your new husband come over sometime.
You seldom hear anything about the normal kid in a family like that. They’re left to fend for themselves. It’s all about the sick kid, all the time, year after year.
Look. I UNDERSTAND how hard it is on the parents, I really do, I’ve seen it. I understand the depression, the frustration, the sheer exhaustion, mental and physical. That doesn’t make it easier on the other kids, who are trying to go on with their lives.
Did you resent your disabled sibling? Did you pitch in with help willingly? Did you act out, out of resentment? Did you become a kind-hearted helper and caretaker? Did you go out in life to be an advocate, a fundraiser for (fill in disease), to find a cure? Did you take off for a new life in another state? Is your sibling still alive, and what plans had been made, and how is he/she doing now? What were your feelings growing up, and what are your feelings now? How did you deal with it?
Thanks to all replies.