My nephew took his own life yesterday. [View all]
This is my first personal post in 6 years or so.
He had a very hard childhood. His mother (my sister) was a 19 year old who thought that the father would marry her - didn't happen. He was given up for adoption to the fathers older brother and his wife. He lived with them for 6 months until his grandmother (my mother) started going nutz about it and with lawyers and over $5000 they had the adoption cancelled and custody was given back to my sister. She gave him to his grandmother.
Over the next 12 years he went back and forth between my mother and my sister. They constantly argued and he would end up living with the person that 'won' the argument. Mom caught his mother putting wine coolers in his bottle - she got him, she had some argument and mom and took him back as custodial parent.......... it went on and on and on. Both would call me about the other. I was in my early 20's and had taken to ignoring both of them.
While home from college I agreed to watch my nephew and a friend of hers child so they could go out for the evening. I got back to school 3 days later - missed classes. I could have called my mother, but I didn't want to 'get her in trouble'. I wish I knew then what I know now.
He tried heroin at 17 -and became addicted - the sense of 'love' he felt from the drug. He said he had never felt anything like it in his life.
His childhood was a nightmare. He got off it onto methadone the next year, but the 'holes' were still there.
His childhood was a nightmare. Going from a party mom to a hard core religious fundamentalist over and over and over and over. My mother is a narcissist, so is my sister -suprise, suprise !!!. From the age of 4 or so I became the 'identified patient'. If anything was wrong I was responsible. I separated from my family at a young age. But my nephew was a BOY - the only gender she was interested in mothering, so she HAD TO have him. My brother had separated from her already, moving 1300 miles away.
My mother dressed him up in 'Crusaders For Christ' armor and a sword. My sister tried to find ppl to watch him while she partied. I wish I knew then what I do now. I was also a partyer sans offspring. Gods, I wish I had seen it then - maybe I could have done something.
I have not lived in the city I grew up in - where he lived, since I hit 17.
I took he and his much younger brother for 4-6 weeks every summer for 7 or so years. My kids were in the age range of his younger brother. I lived in N CA and took us all to amusement parks, national forests, and looooong road trips. He and I had a bond - but there was always a space that I could not access. I tried. The scars from childhood shielded them.
He killed himself - I am wrought. I am not sure what to do, but I feel I should do something - those that read this are witnesses to BRANDON
This is an upper middle class family
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