I know why this last visit has hit me so hard.

Because I left, and my journalism eyes see all the details more clearly.

The smallest details in the crazy house in San Marcos.

Irony, everywhere. Irony, sadness, decay, and dirt, all mixed into the details.

The first detail, pulling into the drive of the house, is the overgrown grass. Instant resentment for my little brother boils, as my eyes scan weeds and a neglected self-propelled lawnmower, sitting in the carport. It's sitting near a broken bottle of bud light.

It was bought on a credit card by my mother, who can't afford food.

And the grass is still too tall.

Inside the filthy house, are brightly colored paintings hanging on every wall. Some are old sketchings drug out of memory boxes of my mother's childhood. Other's are new, painted with bright acrylics. The remnants of the stirred paints are dried solid on a china plate, sitting on a spray painted wicker footstool in the living room. Her brushes, still filled with paint, sit in a half-full glass of muddied paint water next to the plate.

I wonder if it would be noticeable if one of the dogs hit the water and it fell to the filthy rug. Probably not.

There is dried dog poop sitting next to a dark shadowy spot by the front door. I wonder if she noticed that, either.

Tucked into the shelf where the TV used to be, are books. One book I never saw before 'Divorce Hangover' is stacked on a brown book that I do recognize: 'Our family Tree.'

I don't think she ever finished filling out the brown book.

Stacked on the shelf is a thick layer of dust. The TV used to be there, but my brother moved it into her bedroom. He wanted her out of the living room, and out of sight. He didn't tell her that, though. He moved the TV so she could watch it in her bedroom, and probably told her he was doing her a favor. She doesn't watch TV anyway.

Nearer the couch and book shelf, is the computer desk. The computer doesn't work at all anymore. She sits too near it, smoking hundreds of cigarettes, maybe sometimes all night long, and the monitor and keyboard are brown with tar. I wonder if the tiny chips inside are covered with cigarette smoke.

Scattered in the papers on top of the desk is a copy of the divorce paperwork. The same desk where dad typed papers for his college degree. The same degree that got him a job, and got him out. He doesn't need that computer anymore.

Worn into the corner of the desk, near the corner of the couch where she probably sat for five days, barely moving, is a black spot, and a rim where the coffee cup goes. Cigarettes and coffee. Forever.

The worst is her bedroom. It's probably the cleanest room in the house, because she doesn't smoke in there very much. Or at least didn't when my dad was still around, because he was in there most of the time, while she was on the couch. That room is the worst because of the blood spot in the carpet next to the waterbed.

That waterbed is older than I am. My mom and dad bought it back when they were first married. Now, she sleeps alone in it. When she sleeps.

She hadn't slept the night the blood stain appeared on the filthy brown shag carpet, next to the bed.

On the floor, a black spot, that is blood, mixed with lighter spots, where the bleach dyed the rug a lighter orange color. Splattered a bit on the blue cloth railing, are lighter brown spots, and whiter bleach spots.

I remembered when my dad and mom worked together to re-cover those old waterbed railings with the blue cloth, because the brown vinyl had ripped and looked bad.

Now the blue cloth was stained with her blood, and the bleach she drank.

I can't remember how long ago it must have been that my mom and dad did something together. I don't think it was too long ago, but it must have been.

I have to sleep in this bed. My old bedroom, painted cheery yellow, has been overrun with my brother's workout equipment, and a smelly aquarium where an inherited alligator is kept. I have to sleep in this bed, but I don't dare let my sandals slip off my feet while I climb over the railings and settle into the sloshy waves of the waterbed. I don't want my feet to touch the carpet, and I don't want to walk in that stain.

I notice the shelf where my brother has placed the TV, up high in the corner. It reminds me of where they put TV sets in hospitals. Up high, and in the corners. The shelf used to be on the side of the wall, and the paint is chipped and gone from where it used to be.

It was a homemade tie rack my dad put up there, when he realized his college degree would finally make him a white collar man, and ties were necessary. All those colorful ties are gone.

It's hard for me to sleep in that house. Hard because I'm allergic to the cat. Hard because I don't live there anymore. And I can't stop thinking about that blood stain, and the night she drank the bleach straight out of the container.

There's no blanket on the bed, and my brother apologetically offers me a nasty comforter that stinks from sitting too near the aquarium in my old bedroom. He had washed the blanket that is supposed to go on my mom's bed, he told me later, because the blood was everywhere. I never looked to see if the bleach, or blood stain got out of the quilt. He probably forgot to even throw it in the dryer.

I'm here an entire week. I'm supposed to be ‘helping' or something. I'm helpless again, though. It makes me cry thinking of my brother, with his hormones, and his youth, and his confusion, and living with mom like this. I'm mad at him, too. Because he can't seem to do the dishes.. And he sleeps too much. ĘBut all I want to do is sleep, too. And the dishes stay in the sink until the very last day I'm there, and I do them out of guilt for leaving. I wonder if I stayed a month, if they would stay in the sink for 29 days.

I worry too much. I drink too much. I talk funny to my friends, and make not funny jokes. I can't stop thinking about that night. The night comes out during the week in bits and pieces.

I find out that the VW bug broke down again, and a state trooper turned on his blue lights and questioned my mom if she'd been drinking. She said no, he told her she needed a mechanic, and left.

I learned that she walked five and a half miles to the outlet mall, with a beer stuck in the waistband of her white pants, for my little brother. A voice in her head told her to do that, she said. She turned down several people's offers for rides, she laughs when she tells us later about that long walk, and her aching legs.

I learned that she took a big swig of bleach, in her bathroom, because 'she didn't want to live anymore,' she later said on the psych ward in some useless hospital in san Antonio. I learned that she went over to Suzie's house, and Suzie drove her to the emergency room. I learned that my brother didn't find out until 2:30 a.m., about 4 hours after it happened. He checked the voicemail on the phone, and Suzie had called. He was too drunk too be driving, but he went to the ER anyway, drunk with confusion, and guilt for being drunk, and feeling helpless and like white trash at the same time. Drunk, with his schizo mom in the ER, tubes in her nose and throat, and doctors only immediately concerned about bleach, stomach, and esophagus. I found out that my mom ripped the I.V. tubes out of her arms, and took off the suctioned circles on her chest, got dressed and left the ICU ward about two days after her arrival. She told us later she struggled with a nurse on her way out, but decided that she better go back to the hospital when the police showed up along the highway where she was walking and gave her two choices 'handcuffs and state hospital, or ICU again.'

She mentioned more than once that she asked the trooper for a cigarette, and he couldn't give her one because he said he didn't smoke. She said that she believed the man would have given her one, too, if he did smoke. She laughs, sort of, when she talks about how mad her doctor got about her ‘escape.' Her doctor, an internist, deals with stomachs and organs, not sick brains. He said 'you are committed!' with authority in his angry voice, when she was back. My brother and I were a little upset that her doctor threatened her that way. We never talked about it, though. We both said ‘he said that?' when she told us the story.

As if commitment was a horrible thing. We secretly wanted her committed. My brother, only for his own vacation. Myself, for temporary peace of mind. She might get well, if she were locked in. But to have a doctor threaten the very thing she's terrified of, only validates her fears.

She wasn't ever committed anyway.

The whole week we spent together, my brother resented me, because I've been gone. He's got that whole grown up 'you have no idea' mentality all set in already. He doesn't talk too much about it, because he knows there's no point. He lives it, why talk about it?

He forgot that I lived it too, and haven't forgotten. I remind him, but he doesn't believe me. He doesn't trust me anymore, and doesn't understand that I know. A whole year has gone by, and I've been gone. Dad is gone. 'You have no idea' he says. 'I don't even tell you the crazy stuff on the phone half the time,' he says.

I can't convince him that I haven't forgotten. I am not forgiven for taking a year vacation, and getting a job out of college. Neither he nor I can forgive our father, who escaped forever. A wife is someone you can leave behind. A mother is not, and we know that. We're mad at him for his new life, his new girlfriend, his new money. All of it. We all resent one another secretly, out of guilt, frustration, and loneliness.

Tonight, two days into a work week after seven days of craziness, I surf the Internet, distracted, and tired. I find a blurb on ‘handbook for families of schizophrenia' or something like that, and skip everything to read the section on ‘burnout.'

I read it because it's the only thing that matters. And it sticks out to me, because I remember my little brother, sitting in a ‘conference room' in the san Marcos hospital, wedged between my mother's brother, and her parents, all of whom are teary-eyed and confused, and he's stoic. And annoyed at all the philosophical ramblings that we ‘adults' spew out to try and explain what's going on. I remember him saying 'there's a word for it. it's called 'burnout,' and it's a technical word. They have a word for it.' We were all talking about my mom. He was talking about himself, though. He feels sorry for himself. I feel sorry for myself, too.

I know what he's talking about. He's tired. And helpless, and hopeless, and the only one left who lives in it as a sane person.

So tonight, I read the 'burnout' definition, for the second or third time in my life. And it strikes me funny, because if I read between the lines carefully, it says ‘to avoid burnout, avoid the sick relative' in a diplomatic sort of way. And I wonder if they give the same advice for people whose parents are struck with Alzheimer's disease, or spouses with wives or husbands who have leukemia. I'm not quite sure if they used 'get on with your own life' exactly, but it's the only thing that I can remember about dealing with ‘burnout.'

I wonder if whoever wrote it has a parent who's got schizophrenia. I wonder if they know how it feels to be a brother, or mother, or daughter, of someone who killed themselves while the relatives were busy ‘taking care of themselves.'

I wonder if they have an image, like I do, of my dad shaking me, crying, and begging me to leave my mom, and ‘get on with my life.' I think that day was near college graduation or something. And I wonder if they know what it's like to get a phone call from dad, only one year after I've 'gotten a life' telling me that my own mother tried to lose hers while I was away.

And I wonder if it would have made a difference if I was there.

Emily Robinson

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