It’s Not Easter Without A Little Drama

TW: Suicide

Background: I’m 22 and currently live with my parents. I have treatment resistant depression and anxiety that I have had since I was 12 years old and I also have PTSD. Both of my parents are verbally and emotionally abusive and clearly favor my older brother. My older brother is 25 and has high functioning autism. My brother physically abused me as a child and my parents knew about the abuse and did nothing about it. He is also verbally abusive to both my parents and I. He currently lives in his own apartment but sometimes comes over to my parent’s house. I have posted this sub before and if you want to know more about the drama with my family, you can read my previous posts to this sub.

So today my family celebrated Easter as well as my parent’s 29th anniversary and it was chaotic. My parent’s anniversary is today and while my mom bought my dad a gift, my dad dropped the ball and completely forgot to get her anything. He managed to go to the store and get some flowers and a card but I can tell my mom was disappointed. Then during dinner, my older brother called my mom and got pissed off because my parents said they refuse to buy him his own house and he started threatening to kill himself. Both of my parents were stressed out and my dad went to bed visibly annoyed that he didn’t get to enjoy his dinner. I can tell that my parents aren’t happily married.

I just want the drama with my parents and my brother to stop. It’s so taxing on my mental health. The thing that really feels awful is that both my brother and I have depression but I feel like my parents take my brother’s depression more seriously. Whenever my brother says he is suicidal or depressed, my parents drop everything and do whatever they can to make him happy. They will buy him anything, take him anywhere and even take him to the hospital if his depression is bad enough. Meanwhile I have treatment resistant depression that I have had since I was 12 and deal with suicidal ideations but my parents aren’t as supportive. When I tell them that I am depressed or suicidal, I get told to suck it up or at the very least get told, “Well that sucks!” While my mom will spend hours on the internet researching the best doctors and the best meds for my brother, she’s never done the same for me. It’s has always been my responsibility even when I was younger to find my own doctors and research my own meds. My parents will even have other relatives or close family friends talk to my brother and try to cheer him up but they have never done that for me. I feel really alone in my journey to try to improve my mental health and it really sucks to not have a very supportive family to lean on.

Also my brother thinks he is going down to California in May to visit his “friend” but my parents still haven’t told him that he is in no way going to visit him. I put friend in quotation marks because this guy is a drug addict who has conned my brother out of money in the past and always tries to manipulate him. My parents have told me that there is no way my brother will go to California but they haven’t told my brother this because they don’t want to deal with the blow up my brother will have when he hears the news. But that blow up is going to happen eventually and when it does, it will be ugly.

Also my brother refuses to get more intense treatment for his mental health and is refusing to see a counselor despite the fact that he currently wants to die. My mom said there is nothing she can do to force him to get help since he is an adult. I’m really worried he will end up hurting himself. I told my mom this and she said that I wouldn’t care if something happened to my brother. It’s true that I greatly dislike him and don’t want contact with him but I would still be really upset if something ever happened to him. He’s my brother after all. Now I have anxiety about the possibility of my brother seriously hurting himself.

I really need to get out of this situation but I feel so stuck right now. I’m still living at home, dealing with driving anxiety and I still don’t have a job. My depression has also gotten worse. I have a therapist and psychiatrist but I’m looking for new ones because I don’t think my current ones are helping that much. I also plan on practicing driving to get over my driving anxiety but I have to wait until I get my eyes checked because I pretty sure I might have astigmatism. As far as getting a job goes I’ve been struggling looking for one due to low motivation but I’m going to start applying to a few tomorrow and I’m also getting my second Covid shot on April 15th so I’ll be less scared working a job that’s not remote. I’m also thinking of going back to school to become a dental assistant but my parents said they won’t help me out so I will have to take out student loans which stresses me out because I don’t want to be in a lot of debt. I used to go to school for my Associate’s degree but stopped due to my depression and now my parents say that they refuse to pay for anymore school for me. I’m really stressed out and feel incredibly defeated. My depression makes it so I have very little motivation and I’m dealing with apathy which I hate because I want to make myself care so bad and make my life better but it’s like there is something inside me weighing me down. Hopefully I can get a better therapist and psychiatrist to help with getting better but it’s just so frustrating. I feel so alone in trying to get better.

Man I could use a hug right now lol