Opening the Lines of Communication

Saturday, November 22, 2008 - 9:40 A.M. This has been a long week with plenty of things for me to do.  I have had appointments each of the last five days.  Because of this, I have been unable to do any journaling, and am trying to catch up today.  I doubt that will be possible, so I will try and give some brief summaries of what has been going on around here.   Monday morning, I went to a family conference with my brother, social worker, and psychologist.  My sister was not invited to attend this one.  Things went well, and my brother and I seemed to get along peacefully.  He finally opened up some about his alcoholism.  He said that whenever he had problems, or was upset about something, he went and got something to drink.  That seemed to numb the pain.  (I found that to be similar to the way I have felt while using crack cocaine.)   I also saw a side of my brother that I cannot remember seeing prior to this.  He talked about trying to get away from home while he was in college.  He commented on how badly he felt because I was still stuck there.  While talking about this, he spoke about my disability, saying that at different times he tried to imagine himself in my position, but found it difficult to envision that.  As he was talking about that, he seemed to start to break down, came close to crying, and began letting his emotions show through a stern exterior.  I was stunned, because I had never imagined that he thought about me in that way.   When I saw my brother, expressing his emotions in that way, my heart skipped a few beats, and a sense of sadness overcame me.  I sensed a feeling of pain and anguish within him.  I did not want to be the cause of that happening.  During the week, I e-mailed him and said that if it was too much on him, that I did not want him to feel as though he needed to continue counseling with me.  He wrote back, saying that he was fine with the counseling, and that it was probably doing him as much good as it was doing me.   Dale asked me how I dealt with the pain, and suffering, that I had gone through in recent years.  I said that I had probably used the crack cocaine to partially numb my mind to all of the things that had been bothering me.  It was easier for me to run away from my problems than to deal with them.   My brother and I were asked to call each other a few times during the week to keep up our lines of communication.  Rather than do that, we both decided to do this via e-mail.  That seems to be working to a certain extent.   I sent Dale and Dr. Martin copies of the e-mails my brother and I have exchanged during the week.  Dale sent me an e-mail yesterday saying that he felt our lines of communication were getting better.  He also said that he felt my brother and I shared more in common than either one of us thought.   This seemed to be the "highlight" of my week.  Although other things happened to keep me busy, this overshadowed all of them.   All of us agreed to meet again during the first week or two in December.