My brother has schizophrenia and I am so angry at the world

I (f 31) have a younger brother (m 26) who has slowly been showing signs of schizophrenia the past three years but it fully developed within the past 6 months. He has been in and out of hospitals but he used to have longer stretches of clarity afterwords. Now, we’re lucky if we get a week with him.

This disease ran in my family, my uncle had it and my grandmother was diagnosed bipolar back in the 70’s, but now we’re thinking bipolar schizophrenia because criteria has changed since she was diagnosed and since she passed away in 2006. Because of this, I always had a feeling that my little brother would have it. I don’t know how to explain it, I knew one of us would but his story is so much like others I’ve heard even in psych class. Super popular, so sweet, a lot of friends, star football player, D1 athlete, great student and then one day he switched.

My family took time coming to terms, trying to find the “correct” diagnosis even though professionals could see it too and tried to gently bring them around to the idea. Even after his official diagnosis this year, my mom keeps thinking it could be something else - anything else, but we know what it is and he acknowledges it. It’s honestly getting pretty hard to not as he has gotten pretty aggressive both verbally and physically and the paranoia, voices, false narratives, etc. are all coming to the surface instead of being suppressed.

I was devastated when this first started happening, dealing with it like a loss and just hoping he could be like those people on tiktok that master their illness and can delineate between the real and the delusion. I had thought that because I went to therapy and learned to be so pragmatic about it that I had evolved to this level of understanding where it didn’t bother me. But every medication switch, every family counseling session, every long term antipsychotics shot, just seemed to do nothing and proven to not be working and it just felt more and more disappointing and I began to get angry at him and my family. I know I shouldn’t be because it’s a disease but I keep thinking, “what if they came to terms about quicker and were more aggressive with treatment” or “what if he didn’t go on and off medication so much, maybe the medication would effective and bring him back to us”.

My brother was my mini me, I was closest to him growing up. He was so sweet and sensitive and I was always so proud to tell people he was my brother. Now it feels like I can’t even talk about him. When people ask how he is I used to lie and say he was good, but I can’t lie anymore because he has had the police called on him by friends and family as he posted threatening messages online. He has been tackled by officers, handcuffed to stretchers, had wellness checks with 6 officers by his job that he quickly lost thereafter - luckily he has never been arrested and they know his situation but it always scares me that one day someone won’t or if he says or does the wrong thing.

I am getting married next week. I knew that there was a chance he couldn’t come to my wedding. And a part of me didn’t want him to if he was going to be within an intense episode. He tends to swear, scream, try to fight people, etc. I kept saying he needs to be good to be there to my family and to him as well but I think mainly it was my way of trying to mentally prepare for the fact that my little brother may not make it to a day that I wanted him there more than anything. I wanted our family to have a moment of peace… I wanted HIM to have a moment of peace and normalcy. I thought I was ready for the disappointment. He was also so excited about my wedding, every social worker, therapist, doctor, nurse, and patient he’s ever talked to always tells me how he’s looking forward to my wedding and how happy he is that I have found happiness and hopefully he could be an uncle one day.

He texted me this morning that he’s not coming and as it turns out, I was not ready. I’m a mess. I keep wondering why this is happening. “What did my family do to deserve this” “why does my brother have to suffer like this” “why can’t it be more manageable” “why isn’t the medication working - it’s a fight to get him to try it and he’s doing it, he’s trying, and nothing”. I do not want to make it about me at all, because it is about him but this is so incredibly hard to process. How do I walk down the aisle and have a party with family and friends while he sits there and suffers in a hospital. How do I have a good time when I know the only thing he has looked forward to the past three years was my wedding and now he can’t be there. How does this feel like a worse loss than a death - I know he’s still with us but it hasn’t been truly him in a long time. And then the more complicated thought was, what if he didn’t come to terms that he couldn’t make it and he tried to come and then he started a fight or screaming expletives and slurs on this day that is supposed to be about love and happiness and family.

I am so angry that my family is going through this. I am so angry that there is no cure. I am so angry that I can’t talk to my brother the way we used to. I am angry at my family for being so quick to try to minimize it in the beginning. I am angry for everyone that has to be in and out of hospitals - just from a visitors perspective they suck I can’t imagine as a patient. I am so angry that his illness isn’t more manageable. I am so angry at myself that I am selfish to be thinking about me when he is the one suffering. I am angry that I can’t talk to friends or family about this because everyone has their own complex feelings about it and some people would never understand. I am so angry at the world and just wish I would wake up and this would be a sick dream. I know that I’m not asking for advice, or help. I guess I am just posting to get this off my chest in a community that understands.