So this is a weirdly specific -- and also extremely painful -- issue, , hand something I've mostly kept to myself until now, but I did feel like (for the sake of catharsis?), it might be better to at least try to speak about and also get some feedback.
Anyway, I won't bore you with all the details of my life story, but the past decade has been so sordidly miserable and traumatic to the point where I've kind of stopped questioning it and just taken my status on this planet as sub-human garbage for granted. My parents moved us to another country 8 years where (already mentally-ill and sporadically functional), I lost access to my friends, part-time job etc. -- basically, everything I required for at least some semblance of stability. Outside of basic healthcare, I've had no real rights here (like access to disability, housing etc.) and naturally began to decline even further in functioning after the move, which basically just led to my already-unstable narcissistic mother growing increasingly abusive towards me (e.g. I ended up developing PTSD and also a fear of being in my own room after she decided it would be a good idea to call the cops and try to have me forced into a psychiatric ward one day, because I had decided to spend the day in bed). Anyway, I likely had some kind of underlying health issue dating back to before we relocated, but the ensuing years of hypervigilance, abuse, severe stress etc resulted in this becoming severe 3 years ago and I became almost completely bedridden -- which, of course, has only led to further neglect and abuse in the interim.
Here's where it gets complicated though (and apologies for kind of jumping around time-wise): about 2 years before I became too sick to leave the house, I developed an interest in photography after I was given my first smart phone by my parents. This started pretty innocently, mostly just walking around and taking snapshots, which I'd share online, and which became a great reason to get out the house each day and escape my horrible living environment. Over time, after getting some positive feedback, I began to grow more serious about it and started using a DSLR; it's hard to really do justice to how transformative this all was, but after years of being a catatonic depressed shut-in, flitting around from psychiatrist to psychiatrist etc., going out and taking photos gave me a new lease on life and became a whole way to structure my existence. Of course, my home life was still miserable, and I also had no idea that by forcing myself out everyday I was actually worsening my (unknown/undiagnosed) health issue, but I was having too much fun to care and I threw myself into it obsessively; I joined photography groups, started making friends again, got a part-time job etc. -- my camera was my constant companion; it became the center of my world and everything grew out of it.
Sadly, after about a year and a half of this, my health suddenly took a turn for the worse, as I mentioned, and I ended up housebound and eventually bedridden with severe chronic fatigue syndrome. Instinctively I knew I was never going to get out of this situation because I was now too sick and disabled to ever leave home, and I fell into a deep suicidal depression; I spent 3 weeks in a psych ward getting electroshock therapy which did nothing except cause further physical deterioration and I was dumped back home with no solutions. Facing this terminal point, I knew I had to do something, so began digging through the hundreds of old photos I had taken and never published online; I always figured the leftovers weren't that great, but found that I could give them new life by arranging them into little sets and collages, which is basically how I've occupied myself through the past 2 years.
Anyway, this became my third lease on life -- I knew I couldn't go out and take photos anymore, but having this ability to still create and express myself gave me a sense of control and, more importantly, a reason to endure all the other hell; I have always been someone who teeters between self-preservation and destruction, but having access to some kind of creative outlet stabilizes me in a way that nothing else can.
But then something utterly unspeakable and tragic happened: while I was away staying with a friend for 2 weeks, my (at the time 17 year old) brother decided he would sell the family computer that all my work was stored on without any warning, For whatever reason, he had always taken some completely irrational hatred against my photography -- without knowing anything he would tell me my work is 'garbage', threaten that he was going to delete it all etc. And then he actually did; he claimed to have backed everything up before selling the hard drive, but then had to run file recovery software on the back-up drive (why would that be necessary if everything was backed up as he claimed?) and recovered maybe 13 folders of jpegs out of HUNDREDS. I was so sick and disoriented and just fighting to survive my illness that I couldn't even register the impact of this; luckily I had about 35% of my work backed up and this has managed to last me until now (about 2 years) of daily editing and posting online.
However, now as my health continues to decline and I have effectively lost everything a person can lose -- access to friends, the ability to walk, speak on the phone, watch TV, listen to music, care for myself -- the impact of what he did is hitting me and I am fucking ENRAGED. I cannot see him, hear him, be near him without wanting to kill him. Because what he did was completely malicious and done out of spite with no rational reason behind it; he didn't like me storing my photos on a shared family computer that didn't belong to him, so just sold it? It makes no sense, and he didn't even give me the courtesy of a warning so I could just back up my work. All he did was destroy what was left of my life because without my photos to wake up to and work on daily, I have nothing left except to sit rotting in a room while my family continues to abuse me and treat me like shit; he stole the one tiny joy and purpose that I had left in this world and which made all the tremendous suffering ultimately worthwhile. I don't think he has even thought twice about what he did to me 3 years ago, but there is not a day that has gone by where I haven't sat crying and wishing I could just have my work back. He never apologized, and my parents did nothing about it and I haven't said a word to him since.
So I've decided this is the final straw now and I'm (hopefully -- if I can stop being such a fucking pussy) going to kill myself because of this; all I've done daily since then is emotionally lacerate myself, feeling like I failed and will never be able to complete this project, tell myself it was my fault for not having everything backed up (which is horseshit). And I've had enough. So basically, what I'm wondering is how traumatic it would be to leave a note explaining all this and effectively laying the blame on what he did for my premature death? Does he deserve it? Because all of my family treated me like shit so I do feel a bit bad singling him out, but it's also completely true -- if he hadn't done that, I would have kept fighting to go on, and I've never had any catharsis over the matter; it was just swept under the carpet. Deep down I am still an empath and realize it's probably a heavy thing to deal with -- realizing you are partly responsible for your brother killing yourself .. because it is very likely I'm going to die from my health issue anyway, so technically I could just blame that instead. But then I keep circling back to the utter callousness of what he did, and, as I say, how there was no reason to do it. So I'm very torn. Because I have spent such a long time being trained by my family to believe that I just don't matter
Anyway sorry this is so long and if you have read this far, I appreciate it.
. . : : .
Anyway, I won't bore you with all the details of my life story, but the past decade has been so sordidly miserable and traumatic to the point where I've kind of stopped questioning it and just taken my status on this planet as sub-human garbage for granted. My parents moved us to another country 8 years where (already mentally-ill and sporadically functional), I lost access to my friends, part-time job etc. -- basically, everything I required for at least some semblance of stability. Outside of basic healthcare, I've had no real rights here (like access to disability, housing etc.) and naturally began to decline even further in functioning after the move, which basically just led to my already-unstable narcissistic mother growing increasingly abusive towards me (e.g. I ended up developing PTSD and also a fear of being in my own room after she decided it would be a good idea to call the cops and try to have me forced into a psychiatric ward one day, because I had decided to spend the day in bed). Anyway, I likely had some kind of underlying health issue dating back to before we relocated, but the ensuing years of hypervigilance, abuse, severe stress etc resulted in this becoming severe 3 years ago and I became almost completely bedridden -- which, of course, has only led to further neglect and abuse in the interim.
Here's where it gets complicated though (and apologies for kind of jumping around time-wise): about 2 years before I became too sick to leave the house, I developed an interest in photography after I was given my first smart phone by my parents. This started pretty innocently, mostly just walking around and taking snapshots, which I'd share online, and which became a great reason to get out the house each day and escape my horrible living environment. Over time, after getting some positive feedback, I began to grow more serious about it and started using a DSLR; it's hard to really do justice to how transformative this all was, but after years of being a catatonic depressed shut-in, flitting around from psychiatrist to psychiatrist etc., going out and taking photos gave me a new lease on life and became a whole way to structure my existence. Of course, my home life was still miserable, and I also had no idea that by forcing myself out everyday I was actually worsening my (unknown/undiagnosed) health issue, but I was having too much fun to care and I threw myself into it obsessively; I joined photography groups, started making friends again, got a part-time job etc. -- my camera was my constant companion; it became the center of my world and everything grew out of it.
Sadly, after about a year and a half of this, my health suddenly took a turn for the worse, as I mentioned, and I ended up housebound and eventually bedridden with severe chronic fatigue syndrome. Instinctively I knew I was never going to get out of this situation because I was now too sick and disabled to ever leave home, and I fell into a deep suicidal depression; I spent 3 weeks in a psych ward getting electroshock therapy which did nothing except cause further physical deterioration and I was dumped back home with no solutions. Facing this terminal point, I knew I had to do something, so began digging through the hundreds of old photos I had taken and never published online; I always figured the leftovers weren't that great, but found that I could give them new life by arranging them into little sets and collages, which is basically how I've occupied myself through the past 2 years.
Anyway, this became my third lease on life -- I knew I couldn't go out and take photos anymore, but having this ability to still create and express myself gave me a sense of control and, more importantly, a reason to endure all the other hell; I have always been someone who teeters between self-preservation and destruction, but having access to some kind of creative outlet stabilizes me in a way that nothing else can.
But then something utterly unspeakable and tragic happened: while I was away staying with a friend for 2 weeks, my (at the time 17 year old) brother decided he would sell the family computer that all my work was stored on without any warning, For whatever reason, he had always taken some completely irrational hatred against my photography -- without knowing anything he would tell me my work is 'garbage', threaten that he was going to delete it all etc. And then he actually did; he claimed to have backed everything up before selling the hard drive, but then had to run file recovery software on the back-up drive (why would that be necessary if everything was backed up as he claimed?) and recovered maybe 13 folders of jpegs out of HUNDREDS. I was so sick and disoriented and just fighting to survive my illness that I couldn't even register the impact of this; luckily I had about 35% of my work backed up and this has managed to last me until now (about 2 years) of daily editing and posting online.
However, now as my health continues to decline and I have effectively lost everything a person can lose -- access to friends, the ability to walk, speak on the phone, watch TV, listen to music, care for myself -- the impact of what he did is hitting me and I am fucking ENRAGED. I cannot see him, hear him, be near him without wanting to kill him. Because what he did was completely malicious and done out of spite with no rational reason behind it; he didn't like me storing my photos on a shared family computer that didn't belong to him, so just sold it? It makes no sense, and he didn't even give me the courtesy of a warning so I could just back up my work. All he did was destroy what was left of my life because without my photos to wake up to and work on daily, I have nothing left except to sit rotting in a room while my family continues to abuse me and treat me like shit; he stole the one tiny joy and purpose that I had left in this world and which made all the tremendous suffering ultimately worthwhile. I don't think he has even thought twice about what he did to me 3 years ago, but there is not a day that has gone by where I haven't sat crying and wishing I could just have my work back. He never apologized, and my parents did nothing about it and I haven't said a word to him since.
So I've decided this is the final straw now and I'm (hopefully -- if I can stop being such a fucking pussy) going to kill myself because of this; all I've done daily since then is emotionally lacerate myself, feeling like I failed and will never be able to complete this project, tell myself it was my fault for not having everything backed up (which is horseshit). And I've had enough. So basically, what I'm wondering is how traumatic it would be to leave a note explaining all this and effectively laying the blame on what he did for my premature death? Does he deserve it? Because all of my family treated me like shit so I do feel a bit bad singling him out, but it's also completely true -- if he hadn't done that, I would have kept fighting to go on, and I've never had any catharsis over the matter; it was just swept under the carpet. Deep down I am still an empath and realize it's probably a heavy thing to deal with -- realizing you are partly responsible for your brother killing yourself .. because it is very likely I'm going to die from my health issue anyway, so technically I could just blame that instead. But then I keep circling back to the utter callousness of what he did, and, as I say, how there was no reason to do it. So I'm very torn. Because I have spent such a long time being trained by my family to believe that I just don't matter
Anyway sorry this is so long and if you have read this far, I appreciate it.
. . : : .
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