Gambling

Maybe you hit for a small prize, so you continue to sit there, trying to be patient... continuously putting more resources in... getting your hopes up... thinking of what a win can do for you... what it would feel like to have some breathing room.  All joy and recollection of the process is lost, replaced by the focus of the win.  You get a feeling that you're close.  Irrationally, you start putting in more resources, thinking that, with a success right on the verge, it'll make the payoff even that more great.  You want to believe in the odds, and that the system won't screw you every time.  The next thing you know, your resources are drained and you realize you've been betrayed.  You feel empty, foolish, then angry, and yet... you go back for more, and the cycle starts again.  You want to believe.  You need to believe.  You need the relief.

I suppose the previous analogy could be about gambling, but it's the cycle that I go through with my brother in his continuous and never-ending path to getting his shit together.  45 going on 14, the possibility of him ever living on his own is improbable.  He's never had to and everyone has always done for him, or picked him up.  Mentally, he's a child.  So many actions/reactions are missing either out of lack of experience, some sort of coping mechanism or a side-effect of the drug use.  The only fight that he has is to do whatever he can to get his next fix.  When he does get a job and sticks with it, the money that he earns is his worst enemy, because shortly after that, it all falls apart again.

I'm not looking to repair him and the only win that I am looking for is the relief from the craziness,  never knowing when everything is going to fall apart again.  I'm always on the defensive, not able to trust...  always having to put myself in the conniving mind, a place that makes me doubt goodness and a place that I don't want to be...  always around lies... always around and having to resort to screaming.  It makes me angry.  It challenges my patience, frustration level and judgement.

What you can't understand is the craziness if you've never been through it.  It's easy to give the advice to just walk away.  There's no where to go.  He's always there, relentless.  It will never stop, until one of us dies.  I suppose I could move my Dad far away where my brother wouldn't find us or have the resources to show up, but the few things that my Dad does have are here.  I've changed the phone numbers, only for him to find a way to get it.   I've gone to great lengths to protect my Dad's finances, but he always finds a way in.  Abandoning my Dad to deal with the monster that he created is another option to save myself, but I'd just be adding guilt to my list of things I'm dealing with.

My jackpot is peace and quiet.  The odds are against that.